Keep laughing. To set your happiness level higher: keep laughing.

I'm just following up on what I wrote yesterday (really today). Remember the song from the musical, Camelot, "What Do the Simple Folk Do?" Arthur asks Guinevere and she tries to suggest something: a song? a dance? Nothing works. Dear Oscar Hammerstein; his lyrics are so simple and so wise.

What do you do?

I make lists. I love lists. Putting things on a list gives them a shape and a finite quality I can cope with. And checking them off makes me feel better, even if I have to cheat a little. (Putting things down that I've already done makes me feel I'm making progress.) Some sort of calming mantra helps, even if you don't meditate as such. Not the OM kind of mantra. I'm not into Eastern meditation, but I believe in the power of repetition. One imperative has become a mantra and some people don't even know where it comes from:

Be Still.

You'll find it in this short form on kitschy posters and T-shirts and bracelets and decals and wall-hangings. It's from the psalms (Psalm 46: 10) and the full sentence goes:

Be still, and know that I am God.

Go ahead and say it. Your thermostat just went up.

If you want to finish the thought, depending on your tolerance for worship, go ahead: "I will be exalted among the nations,/ I will be exalted in the earth.” I don't think that God belongs to any denomination.