Improv at the end of the world

I open the New York Times on my phone because I feel like I should know what's happening with the world, and what's happening with the world is that it's burning up and going fascist and genociding. It feels predetermined: This is what we're wired for.

I soak up my daily allowance of existential horror and then I close the app, because it's time to do my job, which is to convince people to take an improv class.

The marketing problem at this point is not "Why do comedy?" so much as "Why do anything?" Nobody knows what we're supposed to be doing, but playing goofy kids' games with other adults in a rented church classroom is not the most intuitive choice.

And yet: to the extent that I still hold out any hope for humanity, a lot of it comes from the people who take my classes. Sure, they signed up to learn improv, and they're doing that. And that mostly consists of being silly and having fun, which is frankly all the justification anyone needs.

But they're also paying attention to each other and taking care of each other and connecting with each other in ways that they're sometimes not even aware of. Not all the time, but enough that it's always two of the best hours of my week.

I no longer trust people in large groups, because people in large groups are responsible for everything happening in the first paragraph. But people in small groups keep surprising me with how generous and creative they can be, and how willing they are to be fully present with their fellow humans. It’s almost like that's what we're wired for.