Life could be more like a sitcom than like a serious novel

The surprisingly realistic picture of life offered by sitcoms

One of the most important features of sitcoms is that each episode is independent from other episodes. You don’t need to follow the series continually in order to understand it. Each episode contains a complete, self contained story. And what’s more important, each episode is inconsequential. Whatever happens in the episode 74, has pretty much no effect on what happens in the episode 75. The only things that remain constant from one episode to the next are the characters, their jobs, interests, circle of friends, inclinations and personalities. Of course the personalities and inclinations of characters, along with situations they find themselves in, are the sources of humor.

(A digression: calling such shows sitcoms is a bit imprecise as it implies situational comedy - but most sitcoms derive humor not only from situations but also from the personality of characters, so they are in fact some combination of situational comedy and character comedy)

This is completely different from what happens in serious novels. In such novels, most of the things happen for some reason, and have long term consequences. Most of the characters have certain goals they seek to achieve and they are acting towards these goals. The characters are showing agency, most of the time.

Now finally let’s see what real life is like. In real life, of course, we have some agency, some of the time, and we pursue some goals, some of the time… But, most of the time, our life is more like a sitcom. We lose lots of nerves worrying about inconsequential stuff that will be completely irrelevant a couple of months later. A lot of things that happen, happen for no reason whatsoever, and they are completely random. Just like in sitcoms, the only stable things are our personalities, and to some extent our social circles. Everything else is quite random. And it wouldn’t take too much caricature and dramatization to depict episodes from our lives as a sitcom. And also, just like in sitcoms, some things are, kind of, too stable. It seems that real life contains much less genuine growth and change in most of people, than what you would see in a character of a Bildungsroman or a coming of age story. Just like in sitcoms, our personalities are quite stable, and we are always funny and absurd to outside observers in similar ways that we were 10 years ago.

If you look back 10 years ago, unless you’re a very young person, you’ll find that your life 10 years ago was quite similar to what it is today. You were likely interested in similar things, you were likely having similar passions, similar worries and concerns, and you were spending your free time in similar ways. There was not much actual plot in your life, and what happened in 2014 has quite little impact on what’s happening today. Just like one episode of sitcom has no influence on the other. In a way, we can’t escape from ourselves.

When I started my first job, I thought, and hoped, it would transform me into quite a different person. I thought I would become more serious, more responsible, I thought I would get new insights and perspectives about life, I thought my interests would change, and my social circle would expand. But very few of these things happened. I did learn a bunch of things, and I did get a lot of useful experience, no denying it - but for the most part, I am the same old me as I was before that job. And if someone found me funny before getting that job, it’s likely that they are still finding me funny in very similar ways and for similar reasons, now after having that job for a long time.

Now, of course, I am not saying that there aren’t important changes and turns in our life. I am not saying that there aren’t important decisions with long term consequences. The choice of college major, the choice of first job, the choice of spouse, those are all incredibly important and consequential decisions, with long term effects. Also, the habits we form might be extremely important and consequential, and might change us, slowly but surely, over the long term. For this reason, this year, my New Year’s Resolution was to become a chain reader. This means, that I am never in a pause between the books. Always reading at least one book. No breaking the chain. I am not forcing myself to read a lot, I am not setting any crazy goals regarding the number of books I must read… nothing of that sort… The only goal is to always be reading something. So far it works well, and I am currently reading my 5th book this year. So things like that might be consequential, they might have long term impact.

However, what I was saying is that most of the things aren’t like that. They are more an exception than a rule. For the most part, the life seems to be dominated by the combination of stable personality traits and general life situation on one hand, and lots and lots of random, inconsequential situations that life throws at us, and that we lose our nerves about, in spite of them being so inconsequential. Just like in sitcoms. For this reason, I think every person is funny in their own way. Some of these stupid, inconsequential things, also tend to be very repetitive. I can remember bunches of stupid, unneeded and utterly inconsequential arguments I had with some people in my life about the same things, in which each time each of us would say predictably the same things, and over time we would make almost no progress when it comes to actually resolving discussed issues or changing our positions. Funny, isn’t it? Just like in sitcoms.