The Cosmic Joke (And Why It’s Actually Funny)

There’s an old idea—older than religions, older than language—that says life is a kind of joke. Not a cruel one. More like a joke with a very long setup.

You don’t hear the punchline until the end, and by the time you get there, you realize the whole thing was funny long before you were in on it.

Not funny as in flippant.
Funny the way a perfect coincidence is funny.
Funny the way recognition is funny.
Funny the way you sometimes cry and laugh at the same time.

That kind of funny.

The Setup

Picture this:

Before you were you, you were everything.

Not a character inside the world—the world itself.
Not a face among many—the field that all faces appear in.

And at some point—no one knows how to explain "when," because time is part of the bit—you wondered:

What would it be like to forget?

And that's where individuality comes from.

Identity is the costume.
Memory loss is the stage effect.
The story only works if the actor forget they're acting.

The Middle Scene (Where You Are)

So here you are, convinced you’re a single person with a single life.

You have:

• favorite foods,
• private griefs,
• habits you swear you'll break someday,
• people you'd die for and people you hope choke.

All of it feels personal.
Which is sweet. And also slightly incorrect.

Every time you meet someone—friend, stranger, love, enemy—you're meeting another angle of the same thing you are.

Not in a sentimental way.
In a structural way.

You are the same Consciousness, wearing different masks, facing itself.

This doesn't make life gentler.
If anything, it raises the stakes.
Because harming someone else is just a delayed form of self-harm.
And helping someone else is just remembering.

This isn't morality.
It's geometry.

The Punchline (But You Don't Get It Yet)

If you remembered all of this too soon, the story would collapse. You wouldn’t bother to wake up, or try, or love, or risk anything.

You’d skip straight to transcendence, and transcendence is—surprise—boring. Bliss without contrast has no flavor.

So the structure of the universe said, in its infinite wisdom:

"Alright. Let's try something impossible.
Let's see what happens when the Infinite think it's a person."

And here you are:
paying rent,
making grocery lists,
getting your heart broken in restaurants,
thinking your life is small.

It isn't.

It's just intimate.

Living Like You're In on the Joke

It doesn’t mean being serene or saintly or wise.

It looks more like:

• noticing what you’re doing while you’re doing it,
• letting your feelings move through without wrestling them,
• choosing on purpose instead of by momentum.

Not dramatic enlightenment. Just presence.

Sacredness sneaks through the unremarkable moments:
the dishwater,
the awkward hug,
the breath you take before answering.

The joke is already happening.
You’re just not at the part where you laugh yet.

And When You Finally Remember

At the end—whenever that is—you recognize every face.
You recognize every moment.
You recognize yourself.

And you laugh.

Not because any of it was meaningless, but because it mattered so much you forgot who you were to make it real.

You laugh the way someone laughs when they find themselves in a photograph they don’t remember posing for.

You laugh because you realize:

"Oh. It was me the whole time.
And I took it so seriously."

And the universe, wearing every other face, says:

"Yes. You did. And it was beautiful."