[Music]
you
honestly I’m on stage a lot but I feel
completely out of my element right now
I’m just gonna be vulnerable with you
right here I’m not a professor or a
physicist or a founder or expert at
anything like most of the other speakers
you’re gonna hear today in fact I barely
graduated with a bachelor’s degree last
week I had a recurring stress dream
about a surprise midterm I am 34 years
old something is terribly wrong
something’s always been kind of wrong in
my head I felt that all my life I think
that’s why I talk so much because I’m
always like I’m just really trying to
process what I’m experiencing out loud
when I was young I talked so much
my grandmother predicted that I would be
a preacher my mom predicted that I would
be a lawyer I ended up becoming a
comedian my entire family emigrated from
Korea just so that one day me Peter Som
and Kim would get paid with free beers
domestic ones only I used to get paid
real money from to perform at the Second
City but I left last October and now I’m
really regretting it because health
insurance is dope as hell I wasn’t
always a comedian before that I was a
small business owner and before that I
worked as at Yahoo as a data strategist
which is just a fancy term for overpaid
spreadsheet guy eight years ago I found
comedy at the lowest point in my life I
I in that way I feel like comedy and
church is for the same types of broken
people
you never hear a well-adjusted person
say I’m gonna take an improv class today
honestly I found comedy way before 2009
as a chubby closeted gay Korean boy
raised by fundamental Christian
Christian immigrants I often felt very
vulnerable in my life
and
within a deficit of power but at an
early age I learned that comedy was a
tool I could employ to feel a sense of
control over the chaos Gilda Radner as
you guys all know SNL alum original
member so poignant Lee once said you
feel completely in control when you hear
a wave of laughter coming back at you
that you have caused the power of comedy
comes from embracing difficult truths
about ourselves and our world in the
least painful way possible it’s knowing
that a wily coyote will survive the
devastating fall off yet another cliff
it’s a sense of safety I first learned
about this guy Abraham Maslow in psych
101 a class I almost failed due to a
super-cute period in my life I was
drinking a lot because I I just didn’t
understand how to process freedom and
this period is when that stretched
stream is from by the way Maslow if I’m
remembering correctly was an American
psychologist from the 40s who explained
human behavior through motivation being
from a culty fundamental Christian
background I’ve always been obsessed
with two things first thing figuring out
why we do what we do and the second
thing the Christian rock band jars of
clay they really rocked Maslow’s iconic
hierarchy of needs explains how we have
how we behave based on meeting certain
needs in different levels like basic
physiological needs to safety to
belonging to esteem and to the highest
level self-actualization my first
experience with comedy came from this
this basic level of safety I grew up in
Flushing Queens with cousins aunts and
uncles all living on top of each other
in the same apartment building like most
old-world Koreans my family was very
stoic never showed any emotions
much less talked about them and I was
really difficult for me because as I
mentioned before I just love to talk
talk talk
and when I left for college I forced my
mom to hug me and it’s the most awkward
thing we’ve ever done
my dad on the other hand was a very
expressive man but he only had two
speeds funny and hot Korean rage he was
like your classic alcoholic abusive
father but he never drank alcohol
instead he drank self-pity and shade has
anyone in here read a Malcolm Gladwell’s
book Blanc the power of thinking without
thinking yes okay great
I don’t read because it makes me sleepy
and I think there are more efficient
ways to process information so I
listened to his audiobook but anyway in
his book he writes about what I knew
instinctively as a young child that when
you grow up with a abusive parent you
learn to quickly read the situation and
whether it’s the tension in the room or
the micro expressions on your father’s
face you have to be ready to pivot and
find safety at any given moment I got so
good at reading my father’s explosive
rage split seconds before he even felt
them when he got angry
his eyes were narrow his upper lips
curled and he showed his teeth and this
was the cue for me to make a funny face
or say something non sequitur
purposefully lowering my status to play
the fool to his king I automatically
injected status into my father and
through practice I became an expert at
flipping the status in order to
temporarily find safety now safety is an
integral part of why we laugh if we
don’t assume the safety of the
individual subject that’s being laughed
at it’s difficult for us to enjoy their
failure when people shout the phrase too
soon it’s an audience’s way of saying I
don’t feel safe with this joke safety is
the key factor
the old adage comedy equals tragedy plus
time we are assuming that time healed
all wounds and that we have fully
processed the tragedy providing us a
safe and distance perspective allowing
us to laugh my father passed away in
2014 many many years after we stopped
speaking when he died my mom called me
on the phone and said Peter you have to
go to his funeral and I was like no I’m
not going I don’t what you go to his
funeral
and she was like no you go to his
funeral it’s like what are we doing huh
I hated this guy we hated this guy why
should I go to his funeral and she said
you have to go to his funeral and make
sure he’s dead thank you for laughing
because you laughed it’s easier for you
to accept what’s happened and we can all
move on because you assume that I have
as well we collectively just experienced
a moment of vulnerability and
powerlessness but with a joke we have
regained status quo we have returned to
homeostasis we’re safe again once we
have achieved basic safety we can move
on to the next stage belonging I was an
angry little closeted gay boy who
obsessively read fantasy books and
thought I was smarter than everyone else
so ho making friends that weren’t my
first cousins was impossible it didn’t
help that I played Advanced Dungeons &
Dragons and made sure everyone knew that
it was advanced nobody ever asked my
family was like ATS immigrant poor which
meant that our fridge consisted of spam
kimchi and a block of half heart and
government cheese with two working
parents and no money for nannies at a
young age I was left home alone with a
basic television package and a keyboard
I got for my birthday after explicitly
asking for a Nintendo Entertainment
System my mom would be like you can make
money as a pianist there’s no money in
gaming how wrong she is now
so I spent a lot of time watching
cartoons and eating spicy cheesy spam
and got really really fat like my
nipples exploded and I developed asthma
and my pediatrician looked at my
cholesterol levels and said I was no
longer sexy in middle school middle
school is like a blurry mess for me all
I remember is a basement party where I
did not kiss anyone boys 2 men and a
slam book I allowed Mean Girls and if it
was the meanest things that I’ve ever
read or wrote and by then my nipples
became puffy and I developed like a
humble a cup and like in middle school
girls were like playing with their boobs
because they were like oh I want to make
my boobs bigger and I was like furiously
doing push-ups to make them go away it
did not help that I was also eating
push-ups which is that old-school
Flintstones push-up like push pop ice
cream anyway they’re delicious and you
can find him at with Degas and Pilsen a
few years after that I went to the Bronx
High School of Science a school so nerdy
that it was 40% Asian Americans and like
most subcultures the Asians in my school
banded together to propagate social
hierarchies provide protection and
eventually friendship in exchange for
mass humiliation and these weren’t the
Asians I was used to like those Church
Asians and Asians I saw on TV like
Mickey Rooney this was a new breed of
Asians he’s like I had never seen these
type of Asians before they were leather
jacket wearing shaved head long banged
Tokyo drifting azn’s and they were they
were smart they were cool and they were
a little dangerous and all I ever wanted
was to just burst out into a
choreographed que a pig pop dance with
them on the first snowfall the seniors
herded the freshmen up to a hill called
Harris field and lined us up one by one
they stepped up stepped up and lied down
on their backs and in front of two
seniors who would grab the kit
arms and legs respectively and then roll
them down the hill but when I stepped up
the seniors took one look at my pudgy
pubescent body and said you were too fat
roll yourself down the hill I was
crushed I looked around at the other
freshmen who avoided my gaze none of
them dared to stand up for me and I felt
completely powerless so I did the only
thing I knew to do to make them laugh I
tucked my head in between my legs and
rolled headfirst down the hill like a
complete maniac like I look like that
kid thud but the character and hug the
chubby black head you know what I’m
talking about
and it would go hook is a great movie
the entire hill erupted with laughter
everyone started pointing and cheering
one of the other freshmen came out to be
still laughing and said that was the
funniest thing I have ever seen and
after that day we became inseparable
best friends until we went to separate
colleges and now we no longer talk and
I’m off Facebook so he could be dead
[Music]
that first week of high school I got to
flip the status once again and
controlled when people laughed at me and
what they laughed at I assumed their
point of view about me and instead of
fighting it I played into it I think
this is when I started to figure out
that what it meant means to have
confidence and self-worth I gave the
self-worth is something I give myself
versus what I allow others to play with
someone’s thoughts about you is entirely
about them a reliance and self-worth is
what I felt change in me in high school
that made other kids not only feel
comfortable or being around me but made
them feel good about themselves see that
is the power of comedy it’s like a magic
trick it’s the act of confidence amidst
fear by leaning into your faults and
vulnerabilities you are back in control
esteem the next level well this is a
tough one most of us get stuck here I’m
still stuck here
like today in my head I’m thinking what
if this talk goes wrong what if you
think I’m a fraud what if I’m not funny
enough what if I’m too funny and the
message gets lost why do you even need a
message because it’s a TEDx hello I’m
sorry you have to see that that’s going
through my head right now
and ideally esteem is generated from
self-esteem or validating your own
self-worth but how do you love and
respect yourself when you have no idea
who you are I grew up in a Korean church
one that never shamed homosexuality
because its existence was categorically
denied when I was 10 I asked my mom if
there were gay people in Korea and she
responded with absolutely not there are
no gays in Korea okay maybe there are a
few but they’re all Japanese I was like
well konichiwa mother I wish that’s what
I said I really do but I would have been
so smart and precocious the truth is
because it took me so long to find
safety in my home and belonging within a
group of friends I was afraid of
revealing my truth and I thought that
that would cause everything to just
tumble down like a house of cards what I
know now is that all of that wasn’t real
anyway all that good maslow work that I
had done was built on a faulty
foundation a house built on sand instead
of rock
I had never truly found a sense of
safety a sense of home so when given the
opportunity suit to start over
I took it in 2007 I moved to San
Francisco with a six-figure job at Yahoo
modeling peoples be browsing behavior
it was the creepiest thing I have ever
done and I regret leaving because I
missed f4o 1k match
I was young successful and finally rich
it felt good to be rich like I bought
lattes and left like a dollar or two
dollars in the tip jar I was like
completely reckless the trajectory of my
external life was clear as day it was
get promoted become a VP buy a house
find a korean wife have Korean kids move
my mother in to be the live-in nanny /
grandma I mean the korean-american gold
standard of success but inside I was a
blurry and unrecognizable mess I was a
shell of a person my life being slowly
extinguished every time I suffered
through a college football game or
clumsily fumbled around lady parts I was
desperate to come out of the closet but
was terrified about when my mom would
say how my dad would react but mostly I
was terrified to come out to myself the
first few months in San Francisco was
the loneliest I ever felt I cried a lot
in my obscenely expensive studio
apartment one day a friend of mine asked
me to go to a stand-up comedy show and
at the end of hosts mention that they
talked classes and I decided what the
hell what do I have to lose it turns out
that I had everything to lose
and one thing to gain me you know how
everyone loves a funny person but we all
hate that person who’s like trying to be
funny that was me
my first ever stand-up said I wrote
three minutes of jokes about how
different types of liquor affect you
differently I mean just really in lines
work and they hate it every single
second of it I hated myself but each
bombing led me to what I knew since I
was a young boy to speak the truth in
the exact right way at the exact right
time so I decided to finally come out to
a scattered audience of random open mic
errs at the back of a laundromat you
know how I always dreamed of doing it
and that one person batted an eyelash
the truth I was so ashamed of the demon
that I kept unnamed and caged that kept
me powerless was finally free so I came
out over and over and over again
everywhere I could anyone that would
listen from audiences at comedy shows to
baristas at trendy coffee shops I’d be
like I’m gay and the barista would be
like we’re in San Francisco get over it
I made jokes about being in the closet
and my repressive upbringing people
nodded people laughed
some people even came up to me
afterwards and said you’re very brave
thank you
and after lying to myself for so long
and feeling like a coward I did finally
feel brave I felt powerful
the act of comedy for me was to live my
truth in the face of its vulnerability
comedy forces us to reckon with the
truths about ourselves and our world
that we are too afraid to approach it
forces perspective on the things that we
feel oppressed by comedy empowered me to
come out to my friends and family back
in New York and start a theater in San
Francisco called end games which is just
a nominal homage to the journey towards
my own personal end game of living in
unapologetically honest life in 2012 at
age 30 I left San Francisco I left my
career in Silicon Valley my theatre and
games and armed with a tiny bit of
savings I decided to throw all that away
and pursue comedy full-time giving my
mother yet another small aneurysm and
since then I’ve been lucky enough to
perform on the road making strangers
laugh all across the country and here in
Chicago I helped create a critically
acclaimed revue at the Second City which
I decided to leave last year so I am
unemployed again I am poor again and
unsure of what my future holds but while
the road ahead of me is a complete blur
I’ve never been more clear
on the inside as for self-actualization
now apparently Maslow believed that only
2% of people achieve this anyway so my
mother will be expecting an A+ and but
honestly that seems like a lot of work
to me
and I’m just looking to like really feel
good about myself and marry rich so so
here’s what I would say to you if there
are truths in your life that threaten to
dull your inner presence try making fun
of it first it might just give you the
distance that you need to lead a more
powerful life thank you
[Applause]
you
honestly I’m on stage a lot but I feel
completely out of my element right now
I’m just gonna be vulnerable with you
right here I’m not a professor or a
physicist or a founder or expert at
anything like most of the other speakers
you’re gonna hear today in fact I barely
graduated with a bachelor’s degree last
week I had a recurring stress dream
about a surprise midterm I am 34 years
old something is terribly wrong
something’s always been kind of wrong in
my head I felt that all my life I think
that’s why I talk so much because I’m
always like I’m just really trying to
process what I’m experiencing out loud
when I was young I talked so much
my grandmother predicted that I would be
a preacher my mom predicted that I would
be a lawyer I ended up becoming a
comedian my entire family emigrated from
Korea just so that one day me Peter Som
and Kim would get paid with free beers
domestic ones only I used to get paid
real money from to perform at the Second
City but I left last October and now I’m
really regretting it because health
insurance is dope as hell I wasn’t
always a comedian before that I was a
small business owner and before that I
worked as at Yahoo as a data strategist
which is just a fancy term for overpaid
spreadsheet guy eight years ago I found
comedy at the lowest point in my life I
I in that way I feel like comedy and
church is for the same types of broken
people
you never hear a well-adjusted person
say I’m gonna take an improv class today
honestly I found comedy way before 2009
as a chubby closeted gay Korean boy
raised by fundamental Christian
Christian immigrants I often felt very
vulnerable in my life
and
within a deficit of power but at an
early age I learned that comedy was a
tool I could employ to feel a sense of
control over the chaos Gilda Radner as
you guys all know SNL alum original
member so poignant Lee once said you
feel completely in control when you hear
a wave of laughter coming back at you
that you have caused the power of comedy
comes from embracing difficult truths
about ourselves and our world in the
least painful way possible it’s knowing
that a wily coyote will survive the
devastating fall off yet another cliff
it’s a sense of safety I first learned
about this guy Abraham Maslow in psych
101 a class I almost failed due to a
super-cute period in my life I was
drinking a lot because I I just didn’t
understand how to process freedom and
this period is when that stretched
stream is from by the way Maslow if I’m
remembering correctly was an American
psychologist from the 40s who explained
human behavior through motivation being
from a culty fundamental Christian
background I’ve always been obsessed
with two things first thing figuring out
why we do what we do and the second
thing the Christian rock band jars of
clay they really rocked Maslow’s iconic
hierarchy of needs explains how we have
how we behave based on meeting certain
needs in different levels like basic
physiological needs to safety to
belonging to esteem and to the highest
level self-actualization my first
experience with comedy came from this
this basic level of safety I grew up in
Flushing Queens with cousins aunts and
uncles all living on top of each other
in the same apartment building like most
old-world Koreans my family was very
stoic never showed any emotions
much less talked about them and I was
really difficult for me because as I
mentioned before I just love to talk
talk talk
and when I left for college I forced my
mom to hug me and it’s the most awkward
thing we’ve ever done
my dad on the other hand was a very
expressive man but he only had two
speeds funny and hot Korean rage he was
like your classic alcoholic abusive
father but he never drank alcohol
instead he drank self-pity and shade has
anyone in here read a Malcolm Gladwell’s
book Blanc the power of thinking without
thinking yes okay great
I don’t read because it makes me sleepy
and I think there are more efficient
ways to process information so I
listened to his audiobook but anyway in
his book he writes about what I knew
instinctively as a young child that when
you grow up with a abusive parent you
learn to quickly read the situation and
whether it’s the tension in the room or
the micro expressions on your father’s
face you have to be ready to pivot and
find safety at any given moment I got so
good at reading my father’s explosive
rage split seconds before he even felt
them when he got angry
his eyes were narrow his upper lips
curled and he showed his teeth and this
was the cue for me to make a funny face
or say something non sequitur
purposefully lowering my status to play
the fool to his king I automatically
injected status into my father and
through practice I became an expert at
flipping the status in order to
temporarily find safety now safety is an
integral part of why we laugh if we
don’t assume the safety of the
individual subject that’s being laughed
at it’s difficult for us to enjoy their
failure when people shout the phrase too
soon it’s an audience’s way of saying I
don’t feel safe with this joke safety is
the key factor
the old adage comedy equals tragedy plus
time we are assuming that time healed
all wounds and that we have fully
processed the tragedy providing us a
safe and distance perspective allowing
us to laugh my father passed away in
2014 many many years after we stopped
speaking when he died my mom called me
on the phone and said Peter you have to
go to his funeral and I was like no I’m
not going I don’t what you go to his
funeral
and she was like no you go to his
funeral it’s like what are we doing huh
I hated this guy we hated this guy why
should I go to his funeral and she said
you have to go to his funeral and make
sure he’s dead thank you for laughing
because you laughed it’s easier for you
to accept what’s happened and we can all
move on because you assume that I have
as well we collectively just experienced
a moment of vulnerability and
powerlessness but with a joke we have
regained status quo we have returned to
homeostasis we’re safe again once we
have achieved basic safety we can move
on to the next stage belonging I was an
angry little closeted gay boy who
obsessively read fantasy books and
thought I was smarter than everyone else
so ho making friends that weren’t my
first cousins was impossible it didn’t
help that I played Advanced Dungeons &
Dragons and made sure everyone knew that
it was advanced nobody ever asked my
family was like ATS immigrant poor which
meant that our fridge consisted of spam
kimchi and a block of half heart and
government cheese with two working
parents and no money for nannies at a
young age I was left home alone with a
basic television package and a keyboard
I got for my birthday after explicitly
asking for a Nintendo Entertainment
System my mom would be like you can make
money as a pianist there’s no money in
gaming how wrong she is now
so I spent a lot of time watching
cartoons and eating spicy cheesy spam
and got really really fat like my
nipples exploded and I developed asthma
and my pediatrician looked at my
cholesterol levels and said I was no
longer sexy in middle school middle
school is like a blurry mess for me all
I remember is a basement party where I
did not kiss anyone boys 2 men and a
slam book I allowed Mean Girls and if it
was the meanest things that I’ve ever
read or wrote and by then my nipples
became puffy and I developed like a
humble a cup and like in middle school
girls were like playing with their boobs
because they were like oh I want to make
my boobs bigger and I was like furiously
doing push-ups to make them go away it
did not help that I was also eating
push-ups which is that old-school
Flintstones push-up like push pop ice
cream anyway they’re delicious and you
can find him at with Degas and Pilsen a
few years after that I went to the Bronx
High School of Science a school so nerdy
that it was 40% Asian Americans and like
most subcultures the Asians in my school
banded together to propagate social
hierarchies provide protection and
eventually friendship in exchange for
mass humiliation and these weren’t the
Asians I was used to like those Church
Asians and Asians I saw on TV like
Mickey Rooney this was a new breed of
Asians he’s like I had never seen these
type of Asians before they were leather
jacket wearing shaved head long banged
Tokyo drifting azn’s and they were they
were smart they were cool and they were
a little dangerous and all I ever wanted
was to just burst out into a
choreographed que a pig pop dance with
them on the first snowfall the seniors
herded the freshmen up to a hill called
Harris field and lined us up one by one
they stepped up stepped up and lied down
on their backs and in front of two
seniors who would grab the kit
arms and legs respectively and then roll
them down the hill but when I stepped up
the seniors took one look at my pudgy
pubescent body and said you were too fat
roll yourself down the hill I was
crushed I looked around at the other
freshmen who avoided my gaze none of
them dared to stand up for me and I felt
completely powerless so I did the only
thing I knew to do to make them laugh I
tucked my head in between my legs and
rolled headfirst down the hill like a
complete maniac like I look like that
kid thud but the character and hug the
chubby black head you know what I’m
talking about
and it would go hook is a great movie
the entire hill erupted with laughter
everyone started pointing and cheering
one of the other freshmen came out to be
still laughing and said that was the
funniest thing I have ever seen and
after that day we became inseparable
best friends until we went to separate
colleges and now we no longer talk and
I’m off Facebook so he could be dead
[Music]
that first week of high school I got to
flip the status once again and
controlled when people laughed at me and
what they laughed at I assumed their
point of view about me and instead of
fighting it I played into it I think
this is when I started to figure out
that what it meant means to have
confidence and self-worth I gave the
self-worth is something I give myself
versus what I allow others to play with
someone’s thoughts about you is entirely
about them a reliance and self-worth is
what I felt change in me in high school
that made other kids not only feel
comfortable or being around me but made
them feel good about themselves see that
is the power of comedy it’s like a magic
trick it’s the act of confidence amidst
fear by leaning into your faults and
vulnerabilities you are back in control
esteem the next level well this is a
tough one most of us get stuck here I’m
still stuck here
like today in my head I’m thinking what
if this talk goes wrong what if you
think I’m a fraud what if I’m not funny
enough what if I’m too funny and the
message gets lost why do you even need a
message because it’s a TEDx hello I’m
sorry you have to see that that’s going
through my head right now
and ideally esteem is generated from
self-esteem or validating your own
self-worth but how do you love and
respect yourself when you have no idea
who you are I grew up in a Korean church
one that never shamed homosexuality
because its existence was categorically
denied when I was 10 I asked my mom if
there were gay people in Korea and she
responded with absolutely not there are
no gays in Korea okay maybe there are a
few but they’re all Japanese I was like
well konichiwa mother I wish that’s what
I said I really do but I would have been
so smart and precocious the truth is
because it took me so long to find
safety in my home and belonging within a
group of friends I was afraid of
revealing my truth and I thought that
that would cause everything to just
tumble down like a house of cards what I
know now is that all of that wasn’t real
anyway all that good maslow work that I
had done was built on a faulty
foundation a house built on sand instead
of rock
I had never truly found a sense of
safety a sense of home so when given the
opportunity suit to start over
I took it in 2007 I moved to San
Francisco with a six-figure job at Yahoo
modeling peoples be browsing behavior
it was the creepiest thing I have ever
done and I regret leaving because I
missed f4o 1k match
I was young successful and finally rich
it felt good to be rich like I bought
lattes and left like a dollar or two
dollars in the tip jar I was like
completely reckless the trajectory of my
external life was clear as day it was
get promoted become a VP buy a house
find a korean wife have Korean kids move
my mother in to be the live-in nanny /
grandma I mean the korean-american gold
standard of success but inside I was a
blurry and unrecognizable mess I was a
shell of a person my life being slowly
extinguished every time I suffered
through a college football game or
clumsily fumbled around lady parts I was
desperate to come out of the closet but
was terrified about when my mom would
say how my dad would react but mostly I
was terrified to come out to myself the
first few months in San Francisco was
the loneliest I ever felt I cried a lot
in my obscenely expensive studio
apartment one day a friend of mine asked
me to go to a stand-up comedy show and
at the end of hosts mention that they
talked classes and I decided what the
hell what do I have to lose it turns out
that I had everything to lose
and one thing to gain me you know how
everyone loves a funny person but we all
hate that person who’s like trying to be
funny that was me
my first ever stand-up said I wrote
three minutes of jokes about how
different types of liquor affect you
differently I mean just really in lines
work and they hate it every single
second of it I hated myself but each
bombing led me to what I knew since I
was a young boy to speak the truth in
the exact right way at the exact right
time so I decided to finally come out to
a scattered audience of random open mic
errs at the back of a laundromat you
know how I always dreamed of doing it
and that one person batted an eyelash
the truth I was so ashamed of the demon
that I kept unnamed and caged that kept
me powerless was finally free so I came
out over and over and over again
everywhere I could anyone that would
listen from audiences at comedy shows to
baristas at trendy coffee shops I’d be
like I’m gay and the barista would be
like we’re in San Francisco get over it
I made jokes about being in the closet
and my repressive upbringing people
nodded people laughed
some people even came up to me
afterwards and said you’re very brave
thank you
and after lying to myself for so long
and feeling like a coward I did finally
feel brave I felt powerful
the act of comedy for me was to live my
truth in the face of its vulnerability
comedy forces us to reckon with the
truths about ourselves and our world
that we are too afraid to approach it
forces perspective on the things that we
feel oppressed by comedy empowered me to
come out to my friends and family back
in New York and start a theater in San
Francisco called end games which is just
a nominal homage to the journey towards
my own personal end game of living in
unapologetically honest life in 2012 at
age 30 I left San Francisco I left my
career in Silicon Valley my theatre and
games and armed with a tiny bit of
savings I decided to throw all that away
and pursue comedy full-time giving my
mother yet another small aneurysm and
since then I’ve been lucky enough to
perform on the road making strangers
laugh all across the country and here in
Chicago I helped create a critically
acclaimed revue at the Second City which
I decided to leave last year so I am
unemployed again I am poor again and
unsure of what my future holds but while
the road ahead of me is a complete blur
I’ve never been more clear
on the inside as for self-actualization
now apparently Maslow believed that only
2% of people achieve this anyway so my
mother will be expecting an A+ and but
honestly that seems like a lot of work
to me
and I’m just looking to like really feel
good about myself and marry rich so so
here’s what I would say to you if there
are truths in your life that threaten to
dull your inner presence try making fun
of it first it might just give you the
distance that you need to lead a more
powerful life thank you
[Applause]
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