Feel sideswiped by stress, pummeled by panic, and kicked in the face by chaos? Sometimes you just have to laugh.
Comedy Saved My Life
Sitting on the hardwood floor, the television cast a sallow light on the belongings strewn around me. Tired of packing, tired of the emotional merry-go-round I was on now that my first marriage had failed, I turned to another man.
That night, I began an affair that lasts to this day. The man was David Letterman. The affair is with comedy.
Laughter is an involuntary response. Laughter can express a range of emotion–mirth, pleasure, derision, discomfort–but it is an authentic response born in the moment. And laughter can incite a range of emotions. I read somewhere that a man’s greatest fear is to be laughed at by a woman. That explains a lot about the world.
I am talking here about laughter as a tool for survival. The “laughter is the best medicine” kind. It is generally accepted that, in times of dire circumstances, humanity seeks to escape. What better way to escape negative, counter-productive emotions, than by laughing? In my experience, laughter flips the brain switch from fight-or-flight to problem-solving. Laughter is a life preserver that allows me to float from despair to the solid ground of sanity.
In the coming posts, I will build my creative and observational muscles by discovering new comics, sharing old favorites, and musing about the funny.
On the back end, I am watching, listening to, and reading comedy daily and creating a database in an attempt to–well, honestly–I’m a right-brain person trying to reach the next level of left-brain skills: Excel and analytics.
Please embark on this hero’s journey with me (I’m also a Joseph Campbell fan.), because my livelihood–mental and financial–depends on my ability to emerge, victorious, on the other side.
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Sandy Lashin-Curewitz 