The Real Patch Adams

IMG_0871[1]It’s democratic.  If you’re good you’re good.  You can become a celebrity overnight.  What defines a professional?  Did Jesus practice in becoming a preacher or hired as a spokesperson or have a degree in public relations?  No he was born with it.  It was a gift.  It [still] is a gift.

The door to your house closes, the door to a comedy venue opens.  There are no exams.  No hierarchy.  No one is right.  No one is wrong.  No one has a degree or diploma.  No IQ or GPA.

Robin Williams put it as: “You’re only given a little spark of madness, you mustn’t lose it.”

Louis C.K. analyzes:  “When I began in Boston I saw it as climbing Olympus.  I  didn’t care if I suck.”

It’s a myth that being funny & making someone laugh are different.  Laughing at yourself or other people is a core exercise for the sponge-brain.  Synapses fire when you are the outsider; when you’re extradited.  When you are forced to fight, or rebel.  When you validate yourself.

You mad?  Must blow hot air?  People are here for you.  Fancy that.  A make-shift courtroom to go balls to the wall.  Go bonkers.  Berserk.  You’re the judge, the prosecutor & the defendant.  Spontaneous combustion.

John Wayne had a mantra of his own: “If you’re full of hot air blow it out your other end.”

Like body-building, if your baggage is heavy it’s going to damage the muscles.  That damage creates a chemical cascade & reaches into the nuclei of your muscle cells, & turns on genes that make proteins & build up muscle fibers.  Those genes are only turned on in response to some environmental challenge.  You have to keep lifting heavier & heavier weights.  No Pain No Gain.

Those of us with unrelieved pain zoom in on “goodness.”  We literally “clock-watch.”  A pseudo-addiction, in that behaviors resolve when the pain is effectively medicated — & yet abrupt cessation, or administration of an antagonist, spur withdrawal symptoms.

Jerry Seinfeld says: “It’s not the money or fame.  It’s about being around comedians.  That’s all.  I’m one of them.  I win.”

The foundation for every self-help program to date: If you want to be happy think happy.  ABC  123.