Taking a Wait-and-See Approach to 2026.
Reflecting on misplaced optimism, the chaos of the pandemic and the unexpected gift of being forced to slow down.
There are two moments seared, forever, into the crinkly corners of my brain.
The first, of course, is seeing Princess Leia wearing her gold bikini in The Return of the Jedi. Sitting in the theater on that late May evening in 1983, so many of us in Generation X came to understand that there was, indeed, something in the galaxy more powerful than The Force.
The second is January of 2020, when I was looking over my comedy schedule for the new year, and excitedly telling my wife, “Honey, this is the best year, financially, we’re ever going to have!”
It was at that exact moment, I imagine, that a bat landed at a wet market in Wuhan China and began to cough.
Of course, I don’t really believe that my bragging brought about the pandemic, but I was raised in a family that was half Irish and half Italian and all Catholic, so I can’t rule it completely out, either.
As it turned out, 2020 wasn’t the best year, financially, that we ever had. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that a worldwide pandemic that kept everyone stuck at home for months on end wasn’t particularly good for the live comedy business. I spent that spring getting canceled more than a celebrity who just had a BuzzFeed deep dive about “problematic tweets” drop.
In the moment, it was the most scared I had been since 7-year-old me snuck in a viewing of The Day After. It felt like the world was ending, and, more importantly, taking my comedy career down with it. I generated enough stomach acid to melt an Oldsmobile.
Looking back on those months, however, I don’t have to tilt my head all that much to see them as a gift. As my career was accelerating, I was seeing my family less and less, and it was getting increasingly more uncomfortable every time Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle” would pop up in my playlist. When the pandemic pressed the pause button on the whole world, I was given 18 months, right smack in the middle of my children’s childhoods, to be, basically, a stay-at-home dad. I got to play video games with my oldest son, teach my middle daughter to ride her bike, and learn my youngest kid’s name.
Now, of course, this is just my experience. I was lucky enough not to lose anyone and I was able to make a couple bucks by performing over Zoom and writing a few Lifetime movies. The point that I’m making isn’t that pandemics are good, actually, but rather this: Every time I’ve had an expectation, the universe has had a Uno Reverse card it was just itching to throw down.
There’s a famous Chinese fable that I first discovered in a movie called Charlie Wilson’s War, written by Aaron Sorkin. Going by its box office numbers, I’m going to just go ahead and assume you haven’t heard it:
A little boy is given a gift of a horse. The villagers all say, “Isn’t that fabulous? What a wonderful gift.”
The Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
A couple years later the boy falls off the horse and breaks his leg. The villagers all say, “Isn’t that terrible? The horse is cursed! That’s horrible!”
The Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
A few years later the country goes to war and the government conscripts all the males into the army, but the boy’s leg is so screwed up, he doesn't have to go. The villagers all say, “Isn’t that fabulous? Isn’t that wonderful?”
The Zen master says, “We’ll see.
We’re approaching another new year at a moment in our history, when, every time I open social media on my cell phone, all I can hear are panicked screams while black smoke billows out from the screen. Everyone, from your super progressive teenaged cousin to your angry uncle who isn’t allowed back at his local Dunkin’ Donuts anymore, is scared to death about something, and they don’t seem like they’ll be satisfied until you’re scared to death, too.
Everyone has an opinion, and, in the grand party of life, they have you pressed in a corner while they scream crazy conspiracy theories over the thumping of the music. You didn’t ask to be here and you’re not sure when you’re allowed to leave, and all you can wonder is, “How did it all come to this?!”
And I’m right there with you. I don’t know what 2026 is going to bring, but I can tell you that I’m not nearly as optimistic as I was at the start of 2020.
Except, we all know how 2020 turned out, and none of us know what 2026 will be.
All we can say as this new year begins is, we’ll see.
