How Comedians Can Slowly Lose Themselves
What Currents Are Carrying You? (Comedy Mindhacks #132)
Several weeks ago, I took my family whitewater rafting on the Hudson River in the Catskills of upstate New York. It was pretty much a perfect summer day, except for the part afterward where, when we got back to the car, my son’s deodorant exploded all over him. Anyhow, while we were rafting we got completely soaked, jumped off giant rocks into the river, laughed the whole afternoon, and created memories we’ll hold onto for years. At one point, though, something happened that was particularly memorable.
After a series of strong whitewater rapids, we floated into what looked like a calm section of the river. The surface was almost perfectly smooth. My oldest son relaxed, swung his legs over the side of the raft, and started enjoying the peaceful ride with his toes in the water. Within seconds of him doing that, however, our guide shouted, “Get your feet back in the boat!” Since then, as a kind of inside joke, my wife and I will randomly shout, “Get your feet back in the boat” at him.
Honestly, when my son did that, nothing about dipping his toes in looked dangerous. The water wasn’t churning or crashing and it looked completely safe. But our guide knew something we didn’t. He knew that, beneath that glassy surface, the current was still moving with tremendous force. If my son had slipped into the water, the river could have carried him away before he ever realized what was happening.
It reminded me of living in Hawai’i. The beaches are beautiful, but all the locals know to respect the ocean. It can look perfectly calm so people run and jump in. Meanwhile, they may have no idea about an invisible current that’s lurking below the surface, easily capable of pulling them farther and farther from shore. I learned that lesson the hard way while doing water photography one afternoon. I was focused on getting inside the barrels of waves to get creative shots, but I was so dialed into it that I was completely unaware that the current had grabbed me. By the time I looked up, I was nearly seventy-five yards from where I had started and caught in a rip current I never saw coming.
Here’s the thing: Invisible currents don’t exist only in rivers and oceans. Last night, I watched the documentary A New Kind of Wilderness. After his wife Maria dies, Nik tries to honor the life they had built together. They had raised their children off the grid in the Norwegian wilderness, homeschooling them and living a life intentionally disconnected from much of modern culture. Since she was the bread winner, with their income coming from her photography, once she passed circumstances forced him to sell the farm, get a job, and enroll the children in school.
On the first day of school, however, one child receives an iPad. Then the teachers encourage her to start watching TV shows. She and her siblings begin making friends. They start enjoying school. Before long, the kids no longer want the three-day hybrid schedule Nik and the school agreed upon; instead, they want to attend five days a week. One child even chooses school over a family camping trip. None of those decisions seem shocking on their own. But together, they reveal something powerful: The current is slowly carrying the family somewhere they never intended to go.
That made me wonder how many invisible currents are shaping my own life, particularly in relation to comedy? I think it’s rare that people wake up one morning and decide to become someone they’re not. Instead, as with most things in life, we slowly adapt to whatever gets rewarded. As a comedian, for instance, one room laughs at certain kinds of material, so we push a little farther into that. Social media rewards outrage, so our opinions become louder and angrier. Another comedian tells us what we “have” to do to make it, so we slowly begin sounding more like them than ourselves. None of those choices feel significant in isolation. But the reality is this: Currents rarely announce themselves; instead, they simply keep pulling.
The same thing happens outside of stand-up comedy, of course. Every environment has its own current or currents. Work rewards one kind of person. Friend groups reward another. Social media rewards another. Even churches can unintentionally reward appearances more than authenticity. Left unattended, every environment begins shaping us into whatever it celebrates most. That’s why I don’t think the biggest danger in life tends to boil down to one terrible decision (though sometimes it does). More often, I think what happens is simply the process of drift.
Most people don’t lose themselves all at once. They lose themselves one tiny reward at a time. We can often fall prey to imagining life-changing decisions arriving with fireworks and warning sirens. In reality, they usually arrive quietly. A justification for certain behavior here. A compromise on our values, beliefs, and morals there. A shortcut that seems harmless. Taking another gig or opportunity that doesn’t quite line up with who we want or claim to be. My point is: Drift isn’t usually dramatic, which is exactly why it’s so dangerous. It’s really just the slow process of becoming someone you never intended to become because you adapted to rewards you never questioned.
I’ve watched it happen more than once. A comedian starts by pushing one boundary because it works. Then another. Then another. Eventually, the person who once said, “I’d never do that,” can’t remember when they stopped believing it. One compromise leads to another. Every performer eventually faces the question: “What am I willing to become to get where I want to go?” At some point, that person will look back and barely be able to recognize themselves. They’ll look back and wonder how they arrived somewhere they never intended to go.
Of course, I’m not saying the solution to life is to isolate ourselves from the world. Just like Nik and his family had to adjust, none of us can escape every influence around us. But we can become aware of the currents and ask things like, “Is this environment helping me become the person I want to be? Is this opportunity shaping my character or quietly changing it? Am I steering intentionally, or am I simply floating wherever the current happens to take me?”
Growth requires movement but, as currents and riptides remind us, not every kind or type of movement is progress. Sometimes the calmest-looking waters hide the strongest currents. And life basically works the same way. So, every once in a while, we gotta stop paddling long enough to ask ourselves a simple question: What current is carrying me right now? Because by the time we realize we’re drifting, we may already be a long way from the person we intended to become. If that’s the case, it might be time to get our feet back in the boat.
Along the same lines, let me just say that, if reflections like this are helpful to you, that’s exactly why I wrote Comedy Mindhacks. My goal isn’t simply to help comedians write better jokes. It’s to help comedians understand the invisible thinking behind better comedy. Every mental model becomes another tool for building momentum, and over time those small shifts in thinking have a way of producing much bigger shifts on stage.
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