The joke of life

Read this joke. Watch your emotions suddenly and strongly change at the very end of the joke.

Bob walks up to a woman in a bar and asks her what her glove size is. She says, “Size seven”.

The man says, “Nope” and walks to another woman, asks the same questions and hears “size six and a half”.

He again says, “Nope”. A third woman, an incredibly beautiful redhead, who has been watching this, asks the man, “Hey, my glove size is eight. Is that what you’re looking for?”

The man then smiles and says, “You’re the one I’ve been looking for!” Bob then bends near the woman and quickly whispers something in her ear. Bob and the woman then leave the bar immediately, arm in arm.

(Get ready to watch your emotions change.)

The bartender, who has seen this happen every night for a week, turns to a patron and says, “That Bob, he’s the only man I know who can use a woman’s hand size to

This joke has been left with the punch line unfinished, and the joke will never be finished. You have been duped into reading it.

Ask yourself,Do I feel I have a relationship with the author of these exercises and that trust in that relationship has been violated? Or, can this author, for the sake of helping me gain insights, trick me, lie to me, affront me, etc. with my complete permission to do so?

If I had been warned that the punch line would be unfinished, how differently would I feel now?

Why have I built up an expectation of getting the punch line? What law or rule has been violated? How is this law written within me? Who authored it? Why do I enforce it?

What is my emotional response to being denied it? Should I feel this way? Why am I manufacturing this emotion when I do not want it?

When I have a “good reason” to do so, do I like to feel this way? What is the payoff for having this sort of emotion? Is there ever a reason to feel “righteously indignant” that is 100% justifiable?

What would be the payoff if I practiced not reading the endings of a large amount of jokes or short stories?

Would practice of this sort help me become much more vigilant and aware of my emotions as they are being “born”?

Is life like this for me? Do I feel cheated? Does the meaning of life sometimes seem to be a “punch line just over the horizon?”

Who’s telling the “joke of life?”

Who’s listening to it?

What WAS the punch line to that joke?

Ultimately, am I the punch line?