Comedy and Catalysts

          My mom is a funny woman.

          Her curiosity is larger than her appreciation for suspense.  She reads the last chapter of novels first, and then reads the novel.  She enjoys it better, she says, knowing how it ends while she's in the middle of a story.  Seriously.  She does this!  She often finds out what happens at the end of a movie before seeing it.  Just recently, she asked me to tell her the end of Sherlock Holmes.  Others I can recall: The Shawshank Redemption, Gladiator, The Usual Suspects, and Titanic (ha! Ok, yeah, she knew the end to that one).

          "I'm going to enjoy the movie much more, so just tell me the end," she will assert and smile.

          Point in case: after reading this blog, she wants to know where I'm going with this crazy question about showers and world peace.  Interestingly, this time she hasn't directly asked me the blog's endpoint.  Rather, she's been laying out her theories to see if I'll bite, I think, and then divulge in speech before I write.  This time around, I'm not telling her.  I'm giving her some teasers, but my Endpoint remains sealed.  I'm enjoying her suspense way too much!

          So what does she do?  She takes a longer shower a few days ago to see if the actual experience will help her solve my riddle on the Power of Showers.  But apparently the answers weren't coming quick enough in her shower because she was late to an appointment!

          I told you she was a funny woman.       

          She often makes me laugh because she starts laughing at herself.

          Isn't that true of some really good comedians?  Jerry Seinfeld, with that almost permanent smirk, often seemed on the brink of losing his composure on his sitcom, obviously a previously recorded show.  Were the best takes easy to choose for the editors?  Easy because they were the ones where Jerry actually managed to keep his composure when looking at Kramer being, well, Kramer?

Steve Carell hides his enjoyment in the moment of comedy better than Seinfeld; but it's still there.  Look closely at Steve's eyes in an episode of NBC's The Office or when he's being interviewed on The Ellen Show.  Whichever of his plethora of facial expressions he exhibits in a moment, right there in his eyes is the most genuine emotion: Steve, the real person not the actor, is enjoying this; he's laughing!

How about Saturday Night Live?  Jimmy Fallon was often losing his composure in his SNL days, and we loved him for it!  Some of the most memorable skits are those with actors either barely keeping it together or nearing tears because their repressed laughter is so intense!  Remember the cowbell scene? (Famous SNL Cowbell Skit)  I think my favorite part about Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is that, when I catch it, you can count on him laughing at himself and the crazy things they do.

Something incredibly intimate happens between a star and the average fan when they find themselves sharing in genuine laughter together.

          These rare moments make the stage disappear.
          They make the screen vanish.
          Such laughter joins all without regard to income or accomplishment.

Such laughter is spontaneous and, thus, genuine.  It is a catalyst that sweeps us from individuality into moments of community.  All participants of such genuine laughter, regardless of background and worldview, are indeed lost in the likeness of being simply and wonderfully human together.

          I believe this miracle of human togetherness is an intangible quality of some of the best comedians.  We love them because they are accessible.  Even through endless lines of coax cables,  they seem very close to us.   Why?  Because they are laughing with us.  Seinfeld, Carell, and Fallon transcend the selfishness of entertainment that is fueled by hedonism where only the audience gets fed.  It's like their saying through their smirks and composure-breaks: "Laugh with us!  Join in!  Don't be a numb Couch Potato!  Feed us some Doritos too!"

          In my first post below, I made a bold, strange claim.  I said that longer showers would improve our world.  In the second post, I started to unpack my reason behind the claim.  Key word being: started.

You see, the reason cannot be explained in a definition.  Though the act of showering is simple, the use of this act as an answer to tons of problems in our country and beyond, well, adds profundity to showering.  How so?  An influential answer to the list of world grievances and woes cannot be simple.  To think so would either be a joke or a proclamation of insanity.  The act of showering, as I stated in the last post, harnesses a potential that most other basic, daily tasks have lost.  The answer to improving the world in a noticeable way by showering, then, must imply something very profound that can be unleashed within the act itself.

In other words, our showers today, tomorrow, and the next can be a catalyst for something world changing.

                                        What is that something?

The "something," the reason behind this entire inspiration within me to pen this blog, is not capable of being contained in a definition.  It simply can't be.

Something significant enough to improve a host of global dilemmas must be alive and moving deliberately and with awareness.  It can only be encountered and learned through experience, through stories, through anecdotes of life.

Remember a key difference between your iPhone and you:

Only one can take a shower.
          Only one of the two can be naked,
          with absolutely no protective covering,
          and remain a working entity
          under showers of water.

So let's go further in the discovery of what this catalyst toward greater world goodness and peace might be.  To do so, you're going to have to join me in the journey.  You're going to have to get that participatory spirit of my mom.  I'm entreating the wisdom of Seinfeld and Jimmy Fallon here (How often are "wisdom" and "Jimmy Fallon" used in the same sentence, I wonder?).  You need to "laugh with me."

          So here's an assignment for you (and me):

Right before you're about to turn off the water to your next shower, right when you see your hand reaching for the lever, pause for a few seconds and listen to the water hitting upon the shower floor, the tiles, the inner curtain, your body.  For just a few seconds, listen to the sound of water drops contacting surfaces much more tense than them.  Hear the sound, but do nothing else.

          That's it.  Just hear the sound.

          Once you do this simple first act, you have truly joined this journey with me—a journey toward Profundity through a Simple act of life.

          Once you hear the water drops, you'll be ready for my next post this coming Sunday.

          But you must do the assignment.  Closing your eyes in a dry moment of imagination doesn't count.

          Hear the water drops...