The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The Comedy Rule of Three

Back in the days when I was editing broadcast television, I once worked on a couple of episodes of Late Night with David Letterman. I'll never forget the producer, the legendary Hal Gurnee, talking about how comedy had to adhere to the "rule of three." If you get hit on the head once, it's bad. Twice, it's worse. Three times: it's funny.

Just like comedy, the stories we tell are made more memorable when things happen in sets of three.

Recently a colleague told me he'd had a bad year. He lost his job, his truck was totalled, and then his beloved dog bit his face. I agree, he has had a bad year. The dog bite was definitely the capper.

I'm ok with telling funny stories about my life to make other people laugh. On the other hand, I have realized that I'm constantly creating a running narrative about my life, that I tell myself.  I've seen first-hand that while this self-narrative may seem to reflect reality, it's a story. And like any story, it always leaves something out.

Your Self-Narrative Is Not Reality

I'll never forget one evening, driving home from work in New York. I felt like a jerk, a fool, an idiot, and I couldn't shake that crappy feeling. As if I was feeling out a sore tooth, I started to go over exactly what I had done to make myself into such a fool. As I picked apart all the events that had happened in that day I realized that reason for the "bad day" was just one interaction with someone that didn't go perfectly. Everything else I had done that day, everyone else I had talked to, everything I had tried to do, all of it had gone fine, wonderful in fact. I had let the feelings from one stupid thing that I said become the plotline for my self-narrative.

As I thought through this, I was driving over the Pulaski Skyway. The Skyway is a long steel bridge that overlooks some of New Jersey's most industrialized and, some might say, least picturesque, outlooks. At that moment, however, I realized I was driving directly into a brilliant, jaw-dropping sunset that turned the smokestacks, the factories, and the flat, bland vista into a landscape worthy of a Turner.

Lost in the narrative of my "terrible day," I had literally not seen the wonder that was right in front of my eyes.