Santa Fe by Beirut

The best part of life is laughing.  If you can crack a joke, then you have the special skill of taking a truth, and twisting it in a way so that your audience can see a new angle at something very common.  Reminds me of those damn 80s toys with all the colored squares.  You keep twisting every side and every face of it until the colors align.  Well, humor is much like that.  You keep twisting and reshaping until you see something that cracks you up!  And then you share it with the people who you know will love the realization too.  Feels like magic when you laugh together.

SHARING PROPAGATES LAUGHING

Comedians are my favorite because they come from ALL walks of life, something I believe the whole United States of America thinks is a myth.  We for some reason have this idea engrained that says we must have a certain amount of money, pedigree, love, life … to make it.  Well guess what?  You can make it at anything you want to, if you actually are feeding the little monster inside you who wants more and more of whatever it is that you crave.  Don’t worry, he’s a nice little monster on the inside, maybe more like a gremlin – Gizmo style.  But in any case, you gotta feed the gremlin!  He’s constantly stirring around in there.  And he is not happy when you give it other things that you think will tie him over.  He only wants ONE THING.  He wants what HE CRAVES.  Don’t feed the little guy Doritos when you know he wants PUFFY CHEETOS!

Comedians, break every stereotype known to man.  And by known-to-man, I mean the United States.  Because let’s face it, the rest of the world is much more grounded than we will ever be simply because of our polar opposite definitions of fear.  For example, I was at the Wizards game the other night and I haven’t been to an NBA game since Kobe was hot shit on the Lakers in 2004.  Anyway, I was all pumped and psyched to go to the Wizards game in the hopes of having a team on the East Coast whom I can pay allegiance to finally – my way of really connecting with where I am.  I ended up having a total BLAST at the game!  Not because of how much I love basketball (of which I do), but I caught myself drooling over the basketball players and laughing at how much crap the guys behind me were talking about the players.  In that moment, I realized just how AMERICAN I truly am.  How we all are for that matter.

Blankets on Blankets, and Blessed beyond Blessed.

While that 5% of Diane was completely engrossed in the game, the other 95% started to think about how crazy it was that this is what we are able and allowed to do for fun all the time as American citizens.  This is not new news, only a comical notion at how drastic our lives are in comparison to the rest of the world.  Because while I was pumped to pin where the Geico Gecko was on the jumbo tron, part of me felt a little ridiculous doing that.  I started thinking about how people my own age in other countries will never even have that kind of fun or carefree life to even waste time on let alone pay for it.  They are in survival mode living in actual fear, while I’m afraid of not being able to pee in time to make it back for the last quarter of the game.

 

YES – I thought about all of this while eyeing #12 on the Wizards.

Don’t get me wrong.  I had a faaaaaaaaaaantastic time at the game, and I did not stop my night and be like, “Hold on guys!  Nobody have a good time, because people are dying and suffering everywhere else!”  But it did provoke me to see some angles I had not yet articulated yet about being true to yourself.  Making note of these ironies opened the window to why I appreciate being able to laugh and study comedians that much more.

Thus: LAUGHING is a 1st World Luxury.  And it must be harnessed by everyone.

It KILLS ME when I visit new places in our own country where people are JUST NOT LAUGHING ENOUGH.  We are so lucky to even have the freedom to laugh!  There’s no laughing in other countries the way we crack up!  No no no no no.  Their laughing is like that pure family-joy type laughing.  It probably only happens every now and then.  Nobody is making a living off of that?!  SO basically, we, the Americans who keep getting everything we want, are the last people on the planet who should be slitting our wrists or treating people terribly.  Get on board, and LAUGH MORE.  Simply because, we can.  

Laughing is pure FREEDOM escaping from your lungs when you least expect it.

I love comedians for many reasons, but one of my top fave reasons is because they are LITERALLY trying to be themselves at all times, PAY OR ZERO PAY, in front of tons of people.  And you thought speaking up in your meeting was hard?  This makes me utterly happy to know that at least five people in our nation are trying to genuinely be themselves – AND TAKING HARD HITS.  For nothing.  For no money.  For booing most of the time.  They don’t even know if they will ever make it.  They just want to write jokes and feel people enjoy what they’ve written.

Given that I have never craved to do a job for the sake of being rich, I definitely have the comedian mindset of, “It will all work out.”  I mean I have to!  My Grandpa Joe swam across the Rio Grande, my Grandpa Porfirio made train rides home to Mexico with American money in his pocket. My Mom and Dad miraculously made just enough money being teachers to provide my brothers and I with everything they didn’t have plus the attention, love, meals, conversation, and the warm energy to create HUMOR in our home.  I am eternally grateful for the people who’ve gone before me which is why I naturally became a teacher, writer, and community endorser.  I crave to feed the gremlin inside because I love the gremlin in me.  I love the way my family trusted that God would provide all we needed along the way, and today I channel my faith to keep believing in what I am doing and how to get it done.

Like the immigrant story, comedians don’t care about being homeless or just barely making it.  They don’t even live in fear, because their real fear is the stage itself.  They have to be so present to bring out the vulnerable gift they posses, that once they receive something huge like an HBO special or the chance to write the book they’ve always wanted to write, they are allowed to just enjoy it all.  I guess making it finally, would feel like retirement now that I see how happy and reflective my parents are in their retirement years.  They get to all look back and go, “Yes.  This is why I had no health insurance for 4 years,” said all the best Comedians of our day.  Truth.

I love listening to Judd Apatow talk about when he and Sandler lived in Hollywood and had no money.  Nobody was really able to pay rent, so instead of freaking out, they all waited tables and just wrote joke after joke after joke about their experiences living in LA in their tiny apartment, cracking up together and editing into the AM.  They were in it for the pursuit.  The pursuit of actually being yourself.  Which is rare these days in the US.  Except, for the ones who know it’s rare in the first place.  The rest of you, you’re stuck in the mental fog somewhere waiting to see the light.

Comedians, or people of the likes, pursue what makes their heart tickle, which in Apatow and Sandler’s case meant, betting and laughing at how many times they got offered crack just trying to go from their apartment in Hollywood down to the liquor store and back.  We’ll call that a Wednesday.

 

When you find what you love to do, it’s like a drug that you can’t stop taking.  Much like thecomedian and the gut-trusting nights of sickly doing what you love before an audience who could care less about you, many of us who are in this life for the pursuit get pulled away from the ones we love to get the foundation going consistently.  Like getting the joke off the ground, we must pursue blindly until the faith and trust comes naturally.  But once it all gets going, and you allow yourself to truly listen to the cravings, to the muse that makes you tick, it guides your life and fuels the little gremlin in your heart, paving the way for new opportunities, new places, and more great people.  It eventually provides the consistent balance you are seeking in order to care and provide for your family, friends, and parents.  Full circle moment for sure, and it feels like magic when you realize you are relieved you took the plunge to feed the gremlin in the first place.

I aspire to think and be like my most favorite comedians to the core.  Not because I like to be funny or on stage (and yes I love both to a certain extent), but I crave it in a daily life kind of way.  I do not need the professional title or the professional laugh, but I do need to know that I can make sense of the world we live in so that I can stay true to it in my own way.  The cherry on top is that I get to laugh about all the notions made.

I realized this when I was teaching way back when.  Making kids learn and understand concepts through humor came naturally to me.  Extend that humor to the faculty lounge and man, I wish there were some secret cameras in there to catch the reenactments of our daily stories of all our classrooms!  That should be a show.  The chronicles of the Faculty Lounge.  Even when I was a kid, I used to impersonate celebrities in front of my parents or mock my parents and siblings right in front of them – they loved it!  We all loved it!  It was healing and clarifying in its own way.  Humor just speaks volumes, if you are on the same page of course.

Through this odd way of sharing truths, our family was able to work through a lot of tough chapters together.  I finally understood my family’s way of communicating as a “funny” family when I got older.  When I went through some real life-facing of my own.  I’ll never forget when I showed up at my parents house after leaving the most toxic chapter of my life, and my Dad and Mom walked in per usual from one of their movie dinner-date nights all happy and laughing, expecting nothing bad to be waiting on their doorstep.  They walked in and saw me lying on the comfy green carpet of our family room staring up at the ceiling.  I was motionless.  Dead inside.  They could tell just from that one moment, that no questions needed to be asked.  I just felt them looking at me.

My mom immediately said after about 40 long seconds, “Oh thank God you’re home!!!!!” and in her most loving way, rushed to the kitchen while yelling, “Oh Diane!  I’ve got dessert!  What do you want to eat?  I’ll make you whatever you want!” (Practical loving Martha, food and dessert speaks volumes in our family and that’s funny in itself.)  Meanwhile, I turned my neck toward my Dad and from the floor looking up, I said, “I’m leaving ‘so-and-so’.  It’s over.  There’s nothing else I can do.”  He took one look at me and with the most loving, chill voice said, “Good.  Don’t worry about a thing.  You’re young and pretty.”  I remember, I laughed somewhere deeeeeeeeeep down when he said this, and I knew I was still alive somewhere in there.  Somewhere deep down, the little gremlin had heard the effort to want to giggle, and promised to be fully unleashed once it had the energy to be around people again.  He walked off to the kitchen to help my mom prepare the food, and just like that, my life went on.

MY PARENTS ARE ABSURD AND HILARIOUS AND I LOVE THEM FOR EXACTLY WHO THEY ARE.

THEY ARE A LIFE-FORCE FULL OF HILARITY, TRUTH & TRUST.

You see, comedians DON’T GIVE A CRAP ABOUT WHAT ANYONE ELSE THINKS.  My parents are very much this way.  They didn’t even need to know much about the situation, but of course we talked about it all thoroughly and they helped me get back on my feet by being the absurdly, practical human beings they are.  They speak and spoke with such confidence that it was so easy to trust their words.  About 4 months later, I knew one day I would write to help other people with their extreme-life-moments as well; to do what my parents did for me, but for the world.

This is why comedians or anyone for that matter, are so successful.  When you have this kind of faith in what you are doing, nothing can stop you.  If anything, you’ll take a moment to laugh and look back at it all or enjoy it all in the moment.  Comedians are able to get spontaneous gigs, and hour long HBO specials because of their attitude toward life.  Because they crave and love to be themselves on that stage before all to see, for the sake of self-healing or crowd-healing.  It doesn’t matter.  In the end, it’s such a sacrificial form of healing.

It’s simply ATTRACTIVE BEING YOURSELF.

It’s also total SELF-SACRIFICE.

My parents, brothers and cousins are to thank for the fact that I enjoy making these connections humorously and vulnerably before others.  If it weren’t for all their smack talk and competitive, story-talking, I would never have been able to jump over life’s hurdles the way the circus tiger leaps through the circle of FIRE!

To some extent, WE ALL want to live and be like this.  We all want to be able to just jump through the fire without questioning and know the SECRET to life.  Well guess what?  It’s not a secret, and it only takes the power of YOU to obtain how to live so freely.  You just have to get on board with laughing, or at least be open to seeing the lightness of life even when it is so dark outside.  The way a kid can easily crack up at a joke that makes no sense –  that is exactly how it is!  Just laughing in your own head, in your own world, all the time.  All the live long day.  And when you sink back into the slump that you may have been feeling or the terrible chapter of life that we all must go through, you have to reach into yourself and pull yourself out of the hole you’ve been digging to make yourself laugh.

You have no choice.  This is life.  So find something to crack up about.

Something will throw you off the laughing train 9 times out of 10 per day when you first start trying to see the humor of life.  You’ll be all happy and on a roll like on a Monday, and then Thursday hits and you realize you haven’t paid your medical bills and your car just broke down too!  BUT LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!!!!!!!  You have no choice.  There is literally nothing else you can do, but admit the shit you are in and then laugh at how crappy it is!  This actually happened to me one month ago, but it all worked out.  I would like to thank laughter for being that first launchpad out of HELL.  Instead of freaking out about it, I laughed because yes, it’s total BS that that all those bills can hit you at once.  And they do, almost on purpose.

In a way, things like bills are funny to me now only because after surviving the terrible chapter of 2009, nothing else can ever get me down.  I’m sure many can relate to this kind of talk.  After a mother gives birth, she is completely unafraid of all the petty things she used to worry about.  After you start a business and get it going, you feel invincible.  The thing is, you cannot just surpass hurdles.  YOU MUST INTERNALIZE THEM, for you to be able to endure MORE LIFE LESSONS without freaking out.  That’s the goal!  Because you know it’s not life without a bunch of shitty things happening every three years or so.  More is always coming.  Good and bad is all together in this life.  If you do not equip yourself with the skills from the first lesson, then you end up just being the same idiot who went through it blindly the first time.  One of my most favorite documentaries sums up this notion quite candidly:

“Taking a trip for six months to get in the rhythm of it. It feels like you can go on forever doing that. Climbing Everest is the ultimate and the opposite of that. Because you get these high powered plastic surgeons and CEO’s, they pay $80,000 and have sherpas put the ladders in place and 8000 feet of fixed ropes and you get to the camp and you don’t even have to lay out your sleeping bag. It’s already laid out with a chocolate mint on the top. The whole purpose of planning something like Everest is to effect some sort of spiritual and physical gain and if you compromise the process, you’re an asshole when you start out and you’re an asshole when you get back.” – Yvone Chouinard from  180 Degrees South Documentary

My Aunt Margie lost her son, her Dad, and her husband in the span of 1.5 years.  I thought of her when I was going through my terrible chapter.  More bluntly, she was right there with me through the whole experience.  This voice in my head.  This warmth by my side.  My laugh factory when I needed to see straight again, but couldn’t hear it from anyone else.

I wanted to jump off a cliff, crash my car, eat a whole bottle of pills, but this is what woke me up one day.  I was pissed and wondering why I was dealt a shitty situation.  Crying my eyes out of anger and ready to throw stuff everywhere, I looked at her in rage and said, “Aren’t you mad!!!???  Why aren’t you mad?!?!?!?!  You lost everyone you love!  AND you even lived through what I am going through now!  What the hell!?”  I wanted answers. And she looked me dead in the eyes.  I honestly thought she was going to slap me for not keeping it together.  Instead she brought the volume down and said with great composure, “Mija.  I am here because of you.  Because of Lisa (her daughter).  Because of Andrew (her other son).  Because of the boys (her grandkids).  And because of your parents and the boys (my brothers).”  She goes, “Look at you!  You’re a friggin wreck!  We’re pretty sure you haven’t showered in a month and your hair looks like total SHIT!”

HA!!!!!!!  I am still laughing to this day.  She is the reason for all reasons.  She is the best Aunt I could have ever designed even if I was God.  Man, she kept it real.  And she mad me laugh my butt off.  It was the first time I had laughed in 4 months after my chapter of total disconnection.  We kept the laughter going.  I said hysterically, “Why haven’t you slit your wrists yet?!?!?!”  She laughed back in my face, “Haha!!!!  Mija!!!  I wish I could slit my wrists, but I can’t!  I can’t even kill myself because of all you idiots!”  We couldn’t stop laughing.  I think when you go through Hell, you come out looking for Heaven, so you just can’t stop laughing after life finally shows you what life is all about.

She was right.  She will forever be right.  And to this day, Aunt Margie is going on trips with my Mom and Dad, her most favorite other people in the world to crack up with.  She takes care of my cousins, her two-remaining kids and THEIR kids.  She fills us ALL up with so much joy and love and hugs AND STILL HAS THE HEART TO MAKE US almost pee from giggling too much.  She is literally one of my top favorite people in this world, the best hugger if you ever met a hugger, and is the warmest place I go to (other than my parents) when I need to remember who the hell I am.

If we didn’t have people like this to show us how it’s done, then yes, we’d all be sucking on some drugs to just dip out and be done with it all.  Like my nephew keeps saying when we wrestle, “I’m gonna kick you in the nuts Aunt Diane!”  It just makes me laugh so hard, because I don’t have the “balls” to tell him that I do not have these so-called nuts.  But I will say it to you whether you have nuts or not, you cannot let life kick you in the nuts!  And in some odd way, it’s nice thinking that we all have the same parts.

WE’VE ALL GOT NUTS.

Put it all in perspective for yourself before you have a FREAK OUT over some very, small, easy-to-figure-out stuff.  It’s not about you trying to be a comedian and making people laugh all the time.  Or trying to make yourself happy so that everything in your life goes smoothly and feels peachy.  It’s just a way to re-train your mind so that you can wake up and see the idiosyncrasies of life and be aware of the jokes swimming in your brain that you just haven’t had the BALLS to say out loud yet.

You might make yourself laugh one of these days.  Like really laugh.  And I hope you do. I hope when that moment comes, that you pee a little bit in your pants from laughing so hard.  OR, that you laugh so embarrassingly in front of the person you are crushing over with a bush of kale sticking out of your teeth so that the other person starts point-laughing at you (one of my all time fave styles of laughter), all the while you think you are laughing together but really he/she is laughing AT YOU, not WITH YOU.

IT’S TIME TO GET POINT-LAUGHED AT!

The nation in general, just needs to take a giant dump or something.  Maybe that’s why so many people are gluten free, vegan, and taking probiotics?!  Trust me, if you work on your INNER SELF, you won’t need all these wonderfully, beautiful allergies.  It’s all about doing what you love and trusting that the sea will part for you if you are true to yourself.  When I moved to from the West Coast to the East Coast, my brother would always tell me that the East Coast just needs a giant enema!!! (Hilarious.) That was his way of helping me be myself in a place so not myself and a reminder of just how different we truly are from the environment surrounding us.  That I wasn’t imagining it, and that he too is a survivor.  Still himself.  Still making jokes.  Not phased one bit.  Only more of himself.

The enema statement is so true though. It’s one of those jokes that really hits the spot no matter what way you turn the 80s Rubik’s Cube! And his joke actually helped me cope.  It stayed in my subconscious every time someone at Rite Aid didn’t respond when I said, “Have a nice day!” or when people would comment, “Oh ya, she’s just like that.  She’s happy all the time.”  If they only knew that it takes great strength, skill, practice, and research to block out the crap in this country.

The enema joke lives on because now that I have lived in such a different land for so long I know there are simply some places where a community doesn’t just need one enema, but they need a routine visit to the doctor’s quarterly!  Fall and Christmas kind of make up for it on the East Coast, but then January hits and people are all pissed off again for no reason.  I could care less now.  But I guess it’s always just an anomaly to me because there’s really not a whole lot that makes life suck on the East Coast.  There is so much to love and appreciate about the seasons, the history, the museums.   Anyway, now I have this shield of “I don’t even notice when you’re angry” the way the comedian on stage is simply running on adrenaline to share her gift with the world.

I WAS BORN THIS WAY, to learn, listen, survive, and pursue.  It’s not about how much love I had when I was little, or how many marathons I’ve run, or how much money I have, or where I went to school, or the fact that I’m Mexican-American-Chicana-Latina-Hispanic-Brown.  We all have special gifts.  I simply cannot sleep at night if I do not share mine.  And what I’ve figured out along the way is that not everyone is sharing their gift as honestly as they could be.

Just like when you’re a kid and you realize you can move your left eyebrow up super well, but can’t even move your right eyebrow muscle.  So you choose to sit in front of the mirror for an hour trying to get your right eyebrow to arc up.  That experience alone will connect with about half the population out there.  You see, there’s two types of people in the world. Those who are willing to learn how to move the other eyebrow, and those who just don’t give a crap.  I love to figure these things out and then teach it to someone else.   But the teaching point is still there:  ANYONE CAN GET IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR.  That in itself, is a learned habit.  Even though I naturally want to sit in front of the mirror and conquer this thing I cannot do, I can teach someone else how to pursue the mirror challenge.  I can show them “how I got there,” “what to look out for,” “how to train to discipline yourself in such a way.”  It is then up to you to use the knowledge.  To actually sit in front of the mirror  and exercise your gift.  Your soul.  Your laugh.  Your humor.  Maybe just start with, your smile.

I’ve been realizing I am so used to pouring latte art and pour overs, that I decided to switch hit one day.  “Today, I’m going to pour left handed,” I told myself when I stepped on bar.  I got super excited, but no one ever even knew.  I absolutely loved it!!!!   It was a joke to myself all day long, and was a new challenge I wanted to conquer.  More specifically it was a new perspective.  Now I know what all the lefties be talking about?!  I get all their jokes and all their left-handed idiosyncrasies.  I chose to enjoy this comical moment with myself and it ended up serving a deeper realization.  You either want to learn something or not.  You either want to be you or not.  You either want to settle or not.  You either want to laugh or not.

Get over it.  And just do it.

Why are you holding back the belly laugh?

So Jesus was right then?  You DO NEED TO live life and have faith like the heart of a child. (Jesus Joke!  Oh no, she’s Catholic.  Let’s get all crazy about it.  Jesus.  Get over it.  At this point there’s so many labels out there we’re all practically a blank slate again.)  But yes, He is absolutely right.  If you live life the way a child does, (which is probably the actual secret of life), then you are immune to the “ridiculose” (said with Harry Potter inflection) of life.  If you live life with the faith of a child, then you never think of all the terrible things that could stand in your way of following your heart down the path of what you love to do.  And more importantly, you never doubt; just trust.  More related to this post, if you go at it hard like a kid, then you will SEE what the world is truly like all around you and LAUGH AT IT from the inside out instead of let it kill you.

You need to be able to look at life like a kid, and sit in front of that mirror until you TRULY SEE YOURSELF.  Once you see and admit who you actually are, you will be able to make genuine affirmations about yourself and the world around you.  Then, right behind that chapter, is the comedy phase, that is so rich it never fades away.

If you want the stuck up adult explanation then here it is: get over yourself, to be yourself.  Let’s go through the list of today’s comedians so you can see what I am talking about and realize that you don’t need a special formula to love life and that it’s not rocket science to keep your cool, be successful, and do what you love all at the same time:

• Jimmy Fallon (loving Irish, Catholic family; raised in a humorous, family-entertaining atmosphere; middle class, definitely had steak and potatoes on the table at all times)
• Jerry Seinfeld (stern, loving family; somewhat stoic, dry humor atmosphere, middle class, no awareness or much guidance here; Jerry was kind of on his own, father was a small business owner, but father was the initiative of humor)
• Cristela Alonzo (Mexican, grew up in the hood in Texas; lower class, south of the border style; against all odds craved to do comedy mostly because of all the gangs in her neighborhood;lived in LA in her car at the age of 21, mother died early in her career, succeeded beyond all measures)
• Chris Rock (Black, grew up in  South Carolina and Brooklyn, subjected to racism at a young age, hardworking middle class family, humor derived from young experiences with racism at a predominantly all white school)
• Dane Cook (most average white dude in America; mother died mid-high-point of his career, I saw him live in college and died of laughing because he grew up kidding around with his siblings; middle-class and acts like a 10 year old on the reg)
• Judd Apatow (comedic genius; middle class family, Jewish family and culture very present in his life; his opinions on Judaism formed most of his comedic writing; was a writer prior to ever performing comedy; the most profound comedic writer of our time)

I could go on, but these are just some of my favorites.  Judd Apatow writes more on the specifics of where humor comes from based on all the comedians over the past 30 years in his book, one of my all time favorite reads, Sick in the Head.  Whether you think family, drugs, life experiences, money, race – whatever – affects the success of a comedian, THEY DO NOT.  A person simply craves this bone in their body in order to live. Like a missing vitamin all the time, they crave to twist the truths of life so that you can see them through their perspective, thus clarifying all things in life.  No one is 100 percent right or wrong, much like a parallel for life, but if you are willing to listen to the depth of the jokes, yes you will learn a thing or two.  It’s all about making these hilarious accusations at the people that need to hear them and for yourself to hear out loud.  The most daring affirmations, ’tis comedy.  And whether you agree or disagree, get over it. It’s for the point of manipulating the truth brilliantly so that all perspectives may be seen.

Comedy takes talking and observing.

I have a longing to do the same, in my own way – to twist things until they are seen.  You can do them in your daily job, in the way you act, in how you talk, in how you receive conversations.  Be on standby if you’re not a talker, because when you observe you pick up on all the moments in between the words which are actually funnier.  Note, you cannot strike up more data for the love of comedy if you do not give the audience more chances.  Therefore, my favorite parts about being a talker are watching the people you are having a conversation with and how they react.  Give them something to respond to, and there lies the joke.  These are the most valuable frame-by-frame moments in life, or so, I believe.

People assume that I am a talker, which is very true to a certain extent.  Where people miss the mark is they assume Talkers were born as talkers.  Not the case in my situation.  I grew up more isolated.  To myself.  Not many to actually talk to.  I had to teach myself how to become a TALKER and how to be heard.  After my terrible chapter, I decided to own up to this kind of “fun energy” I was born with and love “the room” as I like to call it.  I decided that I felt okay being the life of the party, and that when in doubt, I could transform a room if I wanted to.  It’s just fun to do sometimes if I feel like it, but also it’s a playground for me to learn A TON about how people tick and interact with community on a bigger scale.

As the talker,  you have the ability to watch people as you are talking.  You can read into a lot of things as you connect through words.  But when you stop talking, you can feel the room too.  Usually people’s insecurities rise to the surface fast or frustrations they have about things not said and said.  Behind all of that is usually one or two secure people.  Their energy will always be so bright and feel so good.  You can then start analyzing where the topics go and how they develop based on who is in the room.  Let’s call this conversation.  Wink.  As I filter these types of things out when I am “talking” to people, it becomes comical to me.  It makes me laugh at how many different kinds of people there are in the world and what we are all worried about on a daily basis.  It’s just part of the gig when you can be the “talker.”  It feels like you have special powers when you work a room, but really it’s all based on reading your audience the way a comedian can feel the room without ever even knowing anyone in it.  Remember, everyone you meet, is simply a stranger.

Therefore, I am an OBSERVER as well.  And this is my favorite role to play.  I personally do not enjoy talking if I am really not in the mood to talk. The secret is that I observe 7 times more than I talk.  WHICH IS A LOT.  Like little clues, I add up all this tiny info from interacting with people and can make sense of the world very quickly based on these observations for the sake of applying to the following passions of mine:  teaching, relating, writing, learning, empathetic strength, comedy sketches + comedic writing, self-awareness, helping heal people, healing myself, and spiritual healing for all.  Observing comes very naturally to me, yet I had to teach myself how to talk in a connected way and withstand the various types of personalities in the room.

You can be ALL THINGS, if you just teach yourself to be.

The jokes are all around, ready to be made.  No one needs to even laugh at what you think is funny, because trust me, YOU will have the last laugh when you realize how fun life can be instead of how mundane or angry you’ve been before this.  When that “last laugh moment” goes off on your insides, I hope you just keep on laughing, forgetting you’re around people, forgetting you’re without people.  It will be the best moment of your life, and then some.  It will be the launchpad to an awesomely, care-free yet purposeful life;  the ying-and-yang if you will.

JUST MAKE ME LAUGH

When I was little, I used to love coming home from school and telling my brother all about my day.  I was on this adrenaline rush of observing and analyzing throughout the day, that I couldn’t wait to tell someone about all the collective data I had picked up on in and out of recess and volleyball and basketball and the beach and just plain cultural stupidity!

He would literally say to me when I walked in the door, “Just make me laugh.”  And boom, I was on!  I would reenact everything I had been growing in my mind from throughout the day for like 15 minutes straight and impersonate every single person I knew.  I LOVED IT.  It was an actual release of some sort not because he would put me on the figurative stage, but because we would laugh at the same trigger points.  It made me so happy that someone else in the world knew what I was talking about!  That he GOT my jokes!  And that is rare to find in this day and age.  Humor is deep, whether you like it or not.  It’s intimate.  It builds stronger friendships, co-working relationships, marriages, lovers, siblings, sibling-in-laws, and bonds between children and their parents.

It’s like all of a sudden, you speak the same language; a secret language.

Today, I cannot really relate to my own generation, or, most of the time I am disappointed in the decisions made and actions taken (or not taken).  Maybe half of us just got zapped too hard with the epidural so it takes until we are 45 to grow the balls to be aware and genuinely connect.  It’s like my generation is terrified to be themselves!  And that’s a shame, because while people are lost and not-trying to look in the mirror, more and more selfish decisions are made that hurt the people they so-call love.  People would rather cheat then break up.  Abuse, than face their own demons.  Isolate, than reconnect.  Talk shit, than move on.  If you inserted even the slightest bit of humor in there somewhere, I bet people would get to the truth a lot faster.  Maybe even take action than passively hurting everyone around them.  Let’s face it, being passive pretty much leads to some of the most horrific events in history.  So strike up the comedy and get down to the nuggets now, before it’s too late.

Not only is humor therapeautic for you, it’s therapeutic for others.  So I dare you to seek therapy in laughter!  Find your funny bone.  Quick disclaimer!  To find your funny bone, you gotta start gettin’ down with who you are.  Trust me.  It’s a trip you don’t want to miss out on.  It’s a wild ride that Mr. Toad is not on.  It’s a trip down memory lane, except without all the memories, just twisted moments your mind pulls together and makes sense of.  It’s pure enlightenment and makes you feel so calm afterward, like lighting a candle in mass and walking away relieved going, “En Fuego Baby!  All that Catholic guilt was just there to lure me in and set me freeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Just, make me laugh.

You know you want to.