working on new stuff, will come out soon. till then, here’s a piece the NYTimes said they “had no idea existed.”
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Laughter, and Love. Declaration-of-Independence ROUGH draft v1.01 (usethisone) That’s right - ‘Life, Laughter, and Love’ were the OG unalienable rights in the ol’ Declaration of Independence. Ben Franklin especially just kept telling everyone ‘live laugh love y’all!’ but Madison and Hamilton both said it made the USA sound super basic (‘We’re not an AirBnB in Asheville, gosh dang it’ that’s what Hamilton said they have it recorded on a VHS tape bc John Jay was super into new tech etc.) So they changed it to life, liberty, etc., but nonetheless: the L3 ethos blossomed within this country and alongside it, an aspirational creed made up of three simple commands: live laugh love Compared to The American Dream — work, save, buy a house?? — this simple, three-step plan for life was a cakewalk in the park, an easy peasy the lemons are breezy situation. In short: a picnic. But a picnic it was not. Twasn’t anything even close to a picnic. Twas an indoor meal with fancy china where everyone sat far as hell away from one another that’s what it was. Live AND laugh? AND ALSO love? What am I, a teletubby? Sure, Tinky-Winky and Laa Laa can dance under the Baby Sun living, laughing, and loving, but us regular humans? Get real.
I have been working to solve this problem for the last fifty (50) years. Every night, once the family is snuggling safe and sound in their beds, I head to the basement, brew a STRONG pot of coffee, and stay up all night chasing the truth of this thing the same way people in tourist towns chase Sasquatch. Was ‘live laugh love’ simply a fictional, impossible reality made true like Santa and his elves? A salve to placate the masses who, god bless ‘em, can’t handle the harsh truths of this world? Or was it real? Join me, if you will, on a brief detour toward the rest of your life. Say you couldn’t ‘live’
What if, theoretically, I found myself in a Laugh + Love sort of place but, tragically, I was unable to Live. If you aren’t alive, you’re dead. How do I know this? Simple. Imagine a medical doctor runs up to someone and grabs their hand to test their pulse (the zenith of medical advancement – the ‘check the pulse’ move is 100% accurate), and then they go, “Ah dang it this person is dead.” If I then asked the doctor, “Ok but is that person alive?” the doctor would say, “No.” And then I’d say, “Ah, so you can’t be alive and dead at the same time” And he would go, “Correct.” And I’d go, “Much like a monogamous couple, they’re mutually exclusive?” And he’d go, “Uh huh” And I’d go, “Thanks.” QED – If you are not alive you are dead. And if you’re dead, you can’t laugh or love. In other words, life is a pre-req for doing the other two things, and frankly, a pretty dumb one to even mention because anyone instructed to Live Laugh Love must, the data shows, already be alive. This isn’t rocket surgery. But what I had to do next just might be… What if you don’t have love though, what then?
Here’s where things get interesting. We already know you would have to be living in order to be laughing and/or loving, yes? But what if there was no loving, only laughter? What if you were Live Laugh but no Love? You’d be a real evil son of a bitch, that’s what. Laughter without any love inside is the work of dark forces hell bent on our destruction. In fact, laughter without love isn’t real laughter at all but a poor substitute. Not even stevia: we’re talking that sweet n low trash, I mean what sorta name is that ‘sweet n low’ get real. Live Laugh is the guy at work who makes fun of everyone but he’s just kidding around why can’t anyone take a joke lighten up god I’ll tell ya why, Matt, its because you have no Love. Which is sad because Matt is actually a very sensitive guy who collects ‘do not disturb’ signs from hotels across the world. Without Love, there is Hate projected outward because one cannot handle looking within. See, even me writing about it got weird right? Like all dark and shit. yuck! Be gone, shit ass ! Many of the brightest minds of history had gotten this far. Einstein famously wrote “You need Live and Love, but how can you guarantee Laugh?” The historians say that one night when he needed a break from this LLL brain buster, he figured out the whole theory of relativity thing (because it was ‘relatively easy to solve compared to L3’). What if there is no laughter?
But what if there was no Laugh, then you’d just be Live and Love, yes? This is the usual stumper for people. They are Live and Love but sometimes they are not Laugh and so they feel that they have failed the L3 phiLosophy. But they haven’t faiLed. It is the phrase that has faiLed us. Because if you are not laughing, then it ain’t real love. To love is to experience the world with another, safe enough to laugh at how absurd it all is. Without laughter, it is not love. Without laughter, it is performance art masquerading as feeling. It is that one couple who needs to make sure you know how much they love each other on social media but when they are alone in their nice condo apartment, they are quiet and still and sad because neither knows how to laugh, not even a small bit. To laugh is to love. To love is to laugh. In conclusionI’ll spare you the 50 years of math stuff I had to do to make this next leap — I fear it genuinely might kill you — just know that it all checks out. Like all materials that aren’t liquid, gas, or plasma, it’s solid. The math. In other words, though mostly with the same words: IF you are living, you must therefore be loving and laughing. IF you are loving AND you are NOT an Evil, you must also be laughing. IF you are laughing, you must also be loving. IPSO FACTO To live is to laugh is to love.Figuring this out nearly killed me. To photograph evidence of it, I had to use a crazy big telescope. Here’s a lo-res photo of what I was able to capture:
I then worked with the Dalai Lama to enhance the photo. Here’s what we got:
Wow.
In conclusion and out of timeThere’s that famous Jesus poem about footsteps:
At least that’s the version we all see. Here’s the original:
Phew. You probably feel like Neo McMatrix when he first learned about ‘The Matrix’. He was overwhelmed like ‘whoa’ because it was so much crazy new info. That’s probably how you feel, so let me just say – if there’s one simple truth you take away, let it be this: You have already succeeded because you are living, laughing, and loving. The hard part isn’t about attaining these states — do nothing, as the lao le ching once said, and you are live laugh love already. The hard part is quieting the L3 Industrial Complex that gets rich off telling you that you must do this and that and the other to be what you already are. You are alive, which means you are alove and alaugh. So, what will you do with your one wild and precious live, laugh, love?
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