Being present and accepting of your current state and emotions is a concept I’ve heard described from various resources from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Eckhart Tolle to Buddhist teachings – and now from Louis C.K. The whole interview is golden but skip to 3:32 for the good stuff.

He describes a moment in which he allowed himself to feel a surge of sadness that he normally would have avoided by retreating to his phone. Instead of practicing avoidance, he allowed himself to “just be sad” and what shortly followed that experience was what he described as “true profound happiness.”

From my experience, sometimes it’s quite hard to understand these concepts from a spiritual practitioner or from institutionalized methods like therapy. But when shoved inside the Trojan horse of comedy, it becomes quite easy to digest. I mean, what is comedy other than a CBT method to positively reframe your perspective on an external circumstance. This interview is pure gold within the archives of the deep internet and has inspired me to reflect on some of the emotions that I’ve avoided throughout my life. Sadness, fear, anxiety – these are things that I’ve run away from, suppressed, felt ashamed to feel. Yet, they could all be positive emotions when accepted and used in a certain way. Louis demonstrates this quite well and I find myself returning to this video every now and then.