Smile and the world smiles with you. Laugh and hear the world LOL!

This is the most life-affirming piece you may hear all day. Alongside gloomy reports from Afghanistan to Wall Street, Katie West’s tee-hee’s and hardy-har’s provide more than a little bit of fresh air. In fact, laughter is a kind of deep breathing, infusing your red blood corpuscles with exhilarating oxygen.

It’s weird to hear New York’s Grand Central Station erupt into a laughter party hosted by West, the founder of the Levity Institute. Even if the chortling of dozens of partiers sounds eerie—almost like the cry of hyenas—lightheartedness transforms a gloomy train station into a sunlit Serengeti.

Try it for yourself. Slowly count to ten. When you reach eight or nine, relax into a smile and make yourself laugh: ha ha. You’ll find, if you “let go, let God,” as my mother used to say, your forced chuckle will turn into full-throated, genuine risibility. Like West’s mother, mine suffered from depression. But like West, my mother believed in her own brand of laughter yoga. She yukked it up as much as she could and sometimes reminded me of the sound track of laughter playing outside of a Coney Island fun house.

You don’t have to be from the merry state of Maine, like West, to pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and laugh.

This piece is devoted to destroying the doldrums.