“If we can laugh at it later, we can laugh at it now.”

And with those words, I tried to heal and manage my crumbling marriage. The two kids were amazing and provided enough focus to keep the adult relationship in the background. The idea, laughing at tragic events or dumb mistakes, has become another mantra that heals a lot of my shame and sadness.

I couldn’t control the world, my marriage, my career. All I could do was be present, act with compassion and empathy, and move forward with as much grace as I could muster. The marriage didn’t last. The coparenting ideas I wrote about on my single dad blog, didn’t work out either. My ex has a lot of anger.

I’ve learned to laugh at the pain. Sometimes, I can manage laughing at it WHILE I’M STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF IT.

Being a cashier at 50+ was a hard blow. I felt defeated. Ashamed that my college degree and efforts had brought me to a entry level job.

I learned again, to laugh at the *bs.* There was plenty to go around. Petty managers who tried to control and micromanage. The time and attendance discipline that was meant to weed out the young slackers but inadvertantly crushed good workers with an inflexible point system.

My son was taken to the hospital after an accident. I called the manager on duty and said I wouldn’t be in, I was taking my daughter to the hospital to wait for my son to get out of the ICU.

“You’re going to have to take a point,” the manager said.

“Wait! Can I get a note from the hospital? That’s insane!”

“No, you don’t have any points yet, so don’t worry about it.”

It’s easier to laugh about it now, ten years later. In the moment, dealing with one of the more stressful moments of my life, and not in a great place emotionally, I had a harder time not harboring some resentment against the manager, but mostly in the harsh system that didn’t allow for exceptions.

Today, we’ve got to laugh a bit at how insane the government of our country has become. There are more FOX NEWS staff now appointed to important roles. The TV Network that helped skew the election and was fined billions of dollars. Oh well.

Maybe we can laugh about that. Maybe in a few years.

The hope I see in others
becomes the hope I have for myself,
my life, and my own journey.
– The Happy Cashier

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