Men Who Think Deeply
Friedrich Nietzsche and Edward Hopper helped me understand why I make jokes.
I found this painting the other day with a Friedrich Nietzsche quote slapped on top of it. The painting was cropped right on the sad clown. It read:
Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Couldn’t have said it better myself. This quote helped me identify something I’ve felt for as long as I can remember. And can you think of a better painting to go with it?
Now I want to make a few things clear with this first post. I certainly don’t want to kick off the publication by saying, “I’m so smart it makes me sad, but it’s okay because I’m hilarious.” I’m not trying to come from a position of superiority with all of this; saying that I need to dumb down my thoughts in order to deal with the commoners. I am saying that I’ve had experiences with certain people where I know they won’t really see me for who I am, so I won’t bother showing it to them. I guess if we had to give it a name, we could call it a form of intellectual code-switching.
This sort of thinking brings a loneliness you can only experience with company. That feeling you get when you’re riding in a car with friends or sitting at a dinner table, and everyone else is engaged in conversation while you’re zoning out. Maybe it follows an attempt at contributing to the conversation met with feigned enthusiasm. You feel miles away from the people you’re sitting next to, and it makes you sad because you feel you have such a grasp on who these people are, and their idea of you is such a watered down version of who you actually are and they’re okay with that. You have to hold back because you think it might be too much for them and they’re none the wiser.
When this happens, I try to sit in my sadness. I face it head on, acknowledge its source and how I might act because of it. I actually take a bit of pride in that, knowing that I don’t run to alcohol or a screen to escape my emotions. That doesn’t make it any less unpleasant. And of course, being the gracious soul that I am, I wouldn’t wish that unpleasantness on anyone else. So with my superpower of emotional intelligence, gifted to me by some freak accident in a lab or something, I read people and deliver perfectly curated comedy that never fails. Yes sir I always get the laugh. Never once have I had a joke bomb in a room of people. Oh and they’re always super tasteful and apropos.
In all honesty, making others laugh is the most rewarding thing that I do. I’m just lucky that I’m somewhat good at it; that it’s part of my charm and not just something I do for attention. Humor is an excellent way to connect with people, and one of the first things I look for in any relationship. Some of my closest friends make me laugh all the time. Here’s the real kernel of truth I’m trying to get at:
Because making someone laugh, and I mean really laugh, requires some level of mutual understanding, people who make you laugh actually understand you more than most.
A level of understanding that could take hours of conversation to achieve is reached in minutes with the exchange of memes. And it’s ironic because part of the reason you really try to make people laugh is because they won’t understand the real you, right? But when they make you laugh, you feel more seen than ever.
That’s about all I’ve got for this one. I can’t promise the rest won’t be this deep. Some might go even deeper.