Life is best approached as an improv comedy class.
In improv, you work with an ensemble of like souls to discover together what you are creating. Everyone contributes ideas and energy, but no one person has the whole picture or directs the path for getting there. If done well, the collaboration brings something original and beautiful into being. It might even be funny.
The backbone principle of improv comedy is “yes, and ….” You go with whatever comes before, accepting the offering of your ensemble mates and adding your piece to the unfolding story. If the story puts you at the wheel of a ship, you don’t say, “Ships make me seasick. Why don’t we pick a comfy couch instead?”
No. You take what you’re given and use it, even if it makes you uncomfortable because improv does not recreate the comfortable. It is a collective process that looks for the thread that is fresh and alive, in this group, at this moment. And when it hits a live current, magic ensues, delight blossoms across our faces, a glimmer of truth is revealed that makes the work and discomfort worthwhile.
Life is like that, except the ensemble has 8 billion people who don’t always remember they are working together to learn about themselves, create a livable world, make magic, and find the thread of love that makes everything possible.
The improv approach is not easy. It requires a willingness to open, be present, and surrender. Open, in that you drop your normal defenses and stand vulnerable to whatever winds are blowing. Present, in that you attune your senses to perceive the wind’s direction and momentum. Surrender not as a quitting, but as a realization there are forces at play greater than your own efforts and that hitching a ride on the back of those forces carries you much farther.
This perspective changes how I look and therefore what I see. Each event of my day is offering me something. What is it? How can I use it to further the story that wants to emerge? The disruptions and delays, the sorrows and troubles, are all in service to our mutual creation. Everyone I meet, even the jerks, are my fellow ensemble members. What can I do to pick their heads up from the small story they are confused by and remind them of the larger story we are all trying to uncover? How can I help us find the thread together?
This is not a frivolous view. It doesn’t ignore the heavy moments and griefs we all encounter. The improv orientation doesn’t eliminate sadness, but we enter it more aware of serendipity, even grace. When done well, comedy has the poignant capacity to hold our common tragedies, not as a laughing-at, but uniting us in a laughing-with. Our resilience grows when we allow our heartbreak, which always feels personal, to brush against the gentle expanse of the universal.
Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash