"Life is a series of low comedies."

The title of today's blog comes from a little comedy song I heard on Prairie Home Companion. I've been thinking about it all week. Maybe because I've been working on our "Discount Comedy Show." Right now, I'm supposed to be writing a song of my own for the show. Good god. I am not a lyricist and far, far too easily distracted.

Just saying. So like any die hard procrastinator (it's a perfectly acceptable way of life and no one can tell me otherwise) I decided to write a blog. So I've been thinking, what does that phrase, "life is a series of low comedies" even mean? A low comedy of course is something in the vein of National Lampoon's or The Three Stooges. A lot of situational humor, often where people on the stage suffer at the expense of our laughter. So there you go. Really that phrase is just your most basic of Buddhist principles: "Life is suffering." But you know what? I like that when you put it in the light of comedy, it gives us an option we didn't have before. We can laugh. We can suffer and we can still laugh because well, what else can anyone do, you know?

It reminds me of my first registration ever. Freshmen year (and every semester since) I stayed up still 5am. Amanda and I made a big production of it. Covered up all the clocks so we wouldn't be tempted to sleep, made coffee, cleaned, did odd jobs like sew buttons back on jackets that we'd been meaning to do. It was pretty grand. And then registration time rolls around. Our suite mates start screaming because they got all their classes within minutes. Amanda and I were locked out of the system. I started crying. I decided to just submit a paper on turnitin.com that I'd been working on. That site was down. I started to sign into Facebook to complain to the entire world (as people do)...and my page was under site maintenance.  I just started laughing. So, so, so hard. I was laughing so insanely that I was crying and I couldn't tell if I was actually crying or not and neither could anyone else. My suite mates were pretty sure I'd cracked. And I was pretty sure at that point that everything, no matter what, couldn't be that bad after all. The irony of it was too delicious; there just had to be a happy ending.

Life is a series of low comedies. And it is so much suffering, everywhere. But I don't think anyone will ever be able to convince me that it doesn't end well.