Rational Insanity
Comedy
Many people say that life is a tragedy – well, I say, life is a comedy. How so? You might ask? Well, for the simple reason that comedy isn't actually all smiles. Behind the mask that any clown wears is a real human face; a human face that has weathered so much in life and earned lines that tell the story of how difficult it is to live in this world. The smile that a clown wears is simply painted on to make other people smile as well – hence, the essence of comedy – to make other people smile or laugh because otherwise, people would be living in an eternal tragedy which many of us choose to call existence.
I remember a philosopher once saying that, 'Happiness is merely a temporary respite from pain.' This is quite true for the strict pessimist, but if we look a little more closely we will realize that happiness and sadness are both reactions to something and hence depends on the stimuli – in English – if someone or something makes us happy, we are happy and vice-versa. Therefore the amount of happiness or sadness that we experience is purely dependent on the amount of happy-or-sad-stimuli that we get; totally random and totally subjective, because certain things can make other people happy and certain cannot. Based on this supposition we now realize how difficult it is to make someone happy, or to make someone laugh for that matter. It's terribly easy to hurt someone or make someone cry, even in movies, painful emotions are so much easier to portray. Why is it like this? Well from my college psychology and psychiatry classes I found out that happiness, which is a result of physiological processes, involves much more chemicals in the brain than sadness or depression, ironic, because it actually takes lesser facial muscles to smile than to frown; but that's an entirely new story to tell. Let's be contented with the generally accepted fact that it is more difficult to make people laugh or smile than it is to make them frown or cry. Now, to the business of comedy:
People laugh when they find things funny – and funny means something else from one individual to the next. People at a stand-up comedy show laugh their hearts out without knowing what kind of work goes into the show that they so heartily enjoy. For starters, there is the script first. Jokes are cruel little things that require cruel big minds. In other words, jokes or comedy for that matter requires a really witty and intelligent brain. Then of course, there is what we call comedy-timing, which is the skill or talent to actually know at what period to crack a particular joke and get the most favorable reaction – some people already have this in their nature – think Pokwang and Dolphy, for instance, and a friend of mine and Marz', si Viño (Hi Ven!). A lot of work actually goes into producing a good piece of comedy – and what's more, comedians usually have to hide behind a funny face while delivering their jokes, despite anything and everything! They actually have to make the supreme sacrifice of putting their emotions in the backseat to make you laugh! Isn't that really selfless? Of course, most comedians do it for the money, but I know a handful who are sincerely and genuinely concerned of other people's happiness and just seriously want to make other people laugh or smile (count me in on this one).
This brings me back to the issue of happiness – what are we actually more concerned of when we are concerned with other people's happiness? I think it still boils down to our own happiness because we are happy to see other people happy, and hence, we make other people happy with the selfish objective of making ourselves happy in the process. Did you get my drift? Even the giving of alms is selfish in a way – we give alms not actually to sincerely and genuinely help, but because we get that fuzzy feeling of satisfaction and catharsis deep within our dark human souls when we do such an act. Therefore, we give alms to acquire for ourselves a feeling that we can only get when we do such a thing. What a selfish world this is actually, but see, real selflessness comes when we do something that we don't get anything out of to make other people happy – such as, holding off buying that cell phone that we had been saving on for a year to give the money to a family we totally don't know because they risk loosing their house if they don't pay for mortgage. It is very difficult to be selfless nowadays, which all the more makes it truly generous of us if we dedicate ourselves to selflessness despite individual concerns. Comedy, if we look at it more clearly, is not really the business of happiness, it is simply the business of joy – comedians seem joyful but there is something more behind the mask; laughing clients, seem joyful, but why would they want to go to a place that would make them laugh in the first place had they been laughing their entire lives. There is a world of difference between joy and happiness, and I pride myself with knowing people who would always say, 'For a shot at happiness, EVERYTHING is worth it….' This could sound selfish, you might say, but perhaps we forgot that EVERYTHING is still in the statement, and you, we already know what that means.
Be rational; be insane…every once in a while! TTFN!
I love you all! Byers!