We all know that military life isn’t always easy. Yes, we need to appreciate the positive aspects of it, and yes, we need to embrace the lessons we’ve learned and the friends we’ve made along the way. But sometimes, especially during deployments, there are days when we feel that our biggest accomplishment is simply getting through it and surviving another day.
If you Google the term “deployment survival kit,” you’ll come up with a couple of pages of fun ideas and creative Pinterest boards of all the different items military spouses should collect in order to survive a deployment or military life in general. Some of these kits are more metaphorical like gum as reminders to stick with it and rubber bands for flexibility. And some kits include items that you really need like wine, tissues, chocolate, and well, more wine.
As I was clicking through blog posts and pinboards, taking notes for future survival kits to send to my MilSpouse friends when they need a pick-me-up, I stumbled across the Real Simple Daily Thoughts and Inspiration Pinterest board. (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that hard to stumble upon anything related to Real Simple magazine. It’s no secret that we SpouseBuzzers are obsessed with it.) And that’s where I found this week’s military spouse quote:
Every survival kit should include a sense of humor.” ~Unknown
I’m all about laughing. I truly believe that a good guffaw offers health benefits. I think a bad mood can instantly disappear with a giggle. An obstacle isn’t so insurmountable with a chuckle. Just about any rotten situation is less stressful when you find something about it that's laughable.
I know from experience that there’s no way to survive military life without a sense of humor. We have to be able to make light of sticky situations. It’s kind of like tripping over your own feet in public. You can be mortified that you just ate the sidewalk in front of an audience of strangers. Or you can laugh at yourself and your bum luck, then get up again and move on.
We all have days like this when Murphy’s Law tests our resolve. We all have days when we miss our spouses and don’t know how we’ll get through another day, let alone another month, of deployment. We all have days when we wonder why we can’t have a more “normal” life. And those are the days when we break out our survival kits and remind ourselves that we will get through this one bad day. We will survive.
And survival is a whole lot more fun with a laugh.
Do you have a sense of humor about military life? What else would you add to a military spouse survival kit?
