I believe in an afterlife. We're currently in it. This is hell. @MikeCannonComedy
Summary
A stranger on the subway opens with a bleak thesis: we're already in the afterlife, and this is hell. Kareem pushes back hard, arguing that anyone doing well would reject this view outright. But the rider doubles down with a grim twist: hope itself makes life hellish because good and bad days are harder than predictable suffering. You'd get "calloused" to constant torment, he claims, but the emotional whiplash of mixed days is unbearable. Even love, "the greatest thing you can experience on this planet," comes with incomprehensible pain. Despite having kids, he admits he tells them life is beautiful while stuffing his true feelings down "like a good Irish man" until they metastasize into something worse. When Kareem suggests he's operating from fear, the guy immediately caves, confessing he has "no belief in my own opinions." He's not okay.
Full Transcript
So, what's your take? I believe in an afterlife. We're currently in it. This is hell.
100% disagree. You disagree. This is regular life. It's going to be hard to pitch somebody who's doing well that this is hell. But let me just put it out there for you. Everybody thinks of hell is endless. It's always going to go. It's just fire, brimstone, get, you know, getting blown by the devil or vice versa or ant. Yeah. Either way. But if that were to go on for eternity, you'd eventually get used to it. You'd have preparation in the morning. You'd wake up and you're like, "All right, I got to get my mouth all ready to take fire."
But isn't that worse to know what's coming every day? You don't get I think you get calloused from it. I think the fact that there's good and bad days is actually harder on us emotionally. The hope is what makes this hell.
So you think that there is no life, there's just this, which is hell. Life is a glimpse of hell. It's a sliver that just shows you like here's pain cuz even love, even the greatest thing that you can experience on this planet brings with it a level of hell that is almost incomprehensible.
I feel a little bad for you. Don't you have children? I do.
Do you teach them this gospel? No. I say that life is the best since they came in it. And uh I basically just stuff all of this down like a good Irish man and eventually it'll metastasize into some sort of growth.
So being a good Irish man, you're not allowed to talk about your feelings. That's right. You know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like you're a little scared. You're coming from a fear-based perspective. Sure. And I think maybe something happened to you where now you're reacting in a way that is unhealthy.
Maybe. I think that's you know Yeah. What could happen to you? You're just a guy. Well, now you found my weakness in the sense that I have no belief in my own opinions. So, you could say just one thing that goes against them. And I'm like, yeah, no, you're right. I'm like, you know what? I mean, Earth is a nice vibe. No, there's beauty in it. There's really, it could be both heaven and hell. Maybe I can amend my entire, a little bit of this, salt, little bit of pepper. I just find that this is kind of an unrelenting hellscape every single day. Even when there's good, it just seems like a bunch of fists are coming at you.
Brother, are you okay? No.