That isn’t funny
[Today’s post is part of a new series of short parables about the creative life, chosen from my almost forty years as a creativity coach. Please enjoy! To be in touch, you can reach me at [email protected]. To subscribe to my Craft of Coaching weekly newsletter, please visit here.]
Jack was a comedian. One afternoon he found himself sitting in a café, trying to write new material.
At the next table, two women were talking. Jack caught a bit of their conversation. One of the women had just received a cancer diagnosis.
“That isn’t funny,” Jack said to himself.
An unfortunately heavy boy who worked at the café came around wiping down tables.
“That isn’t funny,” Jack said to himself.
He remembered how cruelly his brother was acting toward him over a shared inheritance. And how his mother was siding with his brother.
“That isn’t funny,” Jack said to himself.
Usually he made fun of himself. How women dismissed him. How he lived in an alcoholic haze. How he’d lost his pants in Las Vegas. Those sorts of things. He considered how he might beat himself up this time, for the sake of his act, and remembered something quite humiliating from middle school.
“That’s isn’t funny,” Jack said to himself.
There was maybe a joke to be made about an Armenian walking into a Turkish Bar. The joke was coming together just out of conscious awareness. Then he remembered the Armenian genocide.
“That isn’t funny,” Jack said to himself.
A woman, reaching for her phone, knocked over her coffee. The spill quite possibly ruined her laptop and certainly did a number on her skirt.
“That isn’t funny,” Jack said to himself.
He remembered that he had been booked at a Los Angeles club, a big-deal club, and then bounced in favor of a bigger name. Same thing with a gig in London. Worst of all, his deal to make a Netflix special, which was so mouthwatering and tantalizing a possibility as to make him sick with anticipation, had also fallen through.
“That isn’t funny,” Jack said to himself.
Then there was the matter of his girlfriend, who had harangued him for days about sharing, which he hadn’t understood until near the end of their last conversation to mean that she was intending to have an affair.
“That isn’t funny,” Jack said to himself.
Finally, he shook his head. He got up and took his biscotti wrapper and his empty coffee cup to the several bins, whose instructions baffled him. Where did the wrapper go? Where did the coffee cup go? Was this how the world would be saved, one biscotti wrapper at a time?
Jack laughed to himself. “That was pretty funny,” he said. As he left the café, he discovered that he was in a tiptop mood, smiling from ear to ear about something he couldn’t name, taste, or touch.
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Eric Maisel is an internationally-respected diplomat coach who specializes in creativity coaching, existential wellness coaching, and relationship coaching. He trains coaches and provides workshops and webinars nationally and internationally.
Dr. Maisel is the author of 50+ books, writes the “Rethinking Mental Health” blog for Psychology Today (with 3.5 million views), blogs for The Good Men Project and Fine Art America, serves as lead editor for the Ethics International Press Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry series, and is co-founder of Purposely, the life navigation app.
Dr. Maisel’s books include Fearless Creating, Rethinking Depression, Coaching the Artist Within, The Van Gogh Blues, The Power of Daily Practice, Redesign Your Mind, and scores of other titles. He has been published by Penguin Random House, McGraw Hill, Rodale, Harper San Francisco, Shambhala, New World Library, and Conari/Mango, among many others.
Dr. Maisel has created three certificate programs with Noble-Manhattan Coaching, a Creativity Coach Certificate and Diploma Program, an Existential Wellness Coach Certificate Program, and a Certified Relationship Coach program. With Lynda Monk of the International Association for Journal Writing, Dr. Maisel has created an Art of Journal Coaching Self-Study Plus program.
Dr. Maisel’s most recent books are Why Smart, Creative and Highly Sensitive People Hurt (2023), Affirmations for Self-Love (with Lynda Monk, 2024), Parents Who Bully (2024), and Choose Your Life Purposes (2024). Dr. Maisel lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and maintains a thriving international coaching practice.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
