Recently I took hiatus from shampoo, because I stopped caring.
The effects are mild; it looks as if I grow pomade out of my scalp.
Recently I’ve hit a low. You know about the lows? Those feelings you get when it feels as if everyone and everything is flying past you, and it seems like nothing’s working out or going as you think it should. Feeling so “low” in fact that it induces states of prolonged lethargy, and a general lack of wanting to do anything at all, even be social? I’ve heard some people refer to these episodes as “fits of depression” which I find to be a little too on the mark . . . so I sugar coat it with terms like; the lows. It gives me hope simply in terms of the phrasing; if we’re in a low then there has to be a balance; there’s got to be a high out there somewhere. It seems really hard to fly when you barely have the boldness to get up off the ground though.

But I realized something. I realized the significance of one of the main lessons that all of the teachings of comedy at NYCDA underlined time and again: Pain is funny. Not hysterically fall on the floor and soil yourself funny necessarily, (those are the best kinds however) but it is always worth going back and smiling at. It’s a great way to lift the smog of the “low”. Even if you can’t laugh at it, even if it’s got you so down in the dumps it just doesn’t seem like there’s anyway out of the dark. It’s usually at these junctures when we become very open and aware of other people’s pain. Such as an 80 year old man using 2 canes to walk down a steep street, at about the speed of a sprinting turtle, yelling “HELP ME! IM CAREENING OUT OF CONTROL! WONT SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP??? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!” I think that, if anything, will bring a small chuckle to even the most weary and morbid wanderers of the streets. Now the 80-year-old is fearing for his life, Lord knows he’s never traveled at such speeds of fractions of a mile per hour, but all the same he’s suffering on some level, and we’re laughing at him. We explode when our umbrella breaks in the middle of a rainstorm, conveniently at the end of our worst week at work, and look over only to see somebody laughing hysterically because we looked ridiculous. It’s funny really; laughter is spurred on by comedy, comedy is spurred on by pain and the misfortune of others. So if someone’s laughing, that means someone’s crying, which is a melancholy fact, unless of course you’re watching America’s Funniest Animals, in which case nobody cares, but that’s beside the point. The point is; cherish your pain, because there is funny in it, and take every chance you can to laugh at something . . . because being sad sucks.