It’s often said that all life is either a divine comedy or a poetic tragedy.

When thinking about any unfavourable situation, you will ultimately come away with only one of two outlooks: either what you have just experienced is hysterically funny—or morosely depressing.

Imagine stubbing your toe, smashing your new car, spilling a cup of coffee onto your laptop, or not getting that job that you wanted. Either it’s historically funny that each of these things just happened (“Oh, silly Universe…”) or dreadfully depressing (“Why me, God?!”). What we cant escape in each of these situations is our residual outlook. To the divine comedian, they will view life with a little more optimism, curiosity and wonder; while the saddened sadist will come away with nihilism, disillusionment and, ultimately, depression. 

The way you choose to view each situation is entirely up to you, with only two paths for you to take. Naturally, it’s more likely to be seen as funny if the event hadn’t just happened to you, but when placed in the driver’s seat of your own negative experience—well, it’s harder for us to take life just a little less seriously…

This is undoubtedly where the contemporary “Kings of Comedy” shine. Unwittingly, little Zen Buddhas unto themselves, comedians possess the unique ability to observe a situation objectively, see the negatives and, ultimately, come away with the positives.

But aren’t they always funny and having a good time? Looking into the past of most (if not all) comedians and you will see that their life has been built up of insurmountable tragedy. Take Dave Chapelle, Joe Rogan, Joey Diaz, Kevin Hart, Ryan Reynolds, or Ari Shaffir; all of these hysterical personalities, each of them gifting us brief moments of levity in our day-to-day, have all gone through something exceptionally tragic that forced them to realize—“Ok, this is it… I can either run from it, drown in it, or make fun of it.” Obviously, each one chose the latter.

It doesn’t mean that they don’t feel the quells of sadness any less than the next person (in fact, they often attest to feeling it more so), they’ve just taken the effort to push past their grievances and shine a light where darkness seemed to persist.

Perhaps the great irony of life is that the one who suffers the most is often the best one to solve the problem for the rest of us. That is, they have been plagued so heavily by their own detriment that, should they choose to rise above it, will have figured out the way for the rest of us to walk.

So, take what life hands you with a grain of salt, and use these Kings of Comedy as a platform and a lesson for something greater. Life, at the end of the day, is either one big ball of laughs—or a sad longing, leaving you questioning why exactly you are here…

-that is all.