Friend #22 - Manisha
A funny girl
Hey friends! I’m trying to understand how we all make friends. If you have about five minutes to spare, please fill out the anonymous survey - linked here. I would really appreciate it!
I’ve been thinking a lot about vulnerability. As an oversharer, I’m often unintentionally unguarded with people. It helps me feel connected. Other times, I use vulnerability to poke at my mistakes because I’m a funny girl.
I had known of Manisha for a while. The first conversation I had with her was at a mutual friend’s party years ago but when I found out she dabbles in stand-up comedy, I knew we had to reconnect. We’re similar but she’s cooler.
“I like stand-up because I can write something right now and perform it tonight,” Manisha tells me as we sit for coffee in downtown Toronto.
She’s just completed a comedy class at Second City. I went to watch her showcase performance two weeks ago and her tales of hair care were ones that I could relate to.
Manisha explains that stand-up comedy has helped her build grit. It’s allowed her to be comfortable with the idea that not everyone is going to like what she says even if she may find something that she’s written very funny. “The joke may just not be funny for them and I can do the same set in front of a different group and do very well,” she says.
“In stand-up comedy. There is a big level of vulnerability and a lot of my jokes are self deprecating. I share the most embarrassing things about myself. I accept them and know them but instead of coming from a place of shame, it comes from a place of humor and that makes me more accepting of myself,” says Manisha.
Last year, I became ashamed of my humor. My depression had heightened my sense of observation and I spent one summer weekend writing a comedy cookbook that I shared with my closest friends.
I also went to a hypnotherapist concerned that maybe I was finding too many things funny and my judgment was off.
“Do you think life is better with more or less humor?” he asked me.
“More,” I replied.
“Then feel sorry for the people who don’t find you funny,” he said.
It’s beneficial to find things funny but does it come at the cost of happiness? Manisha had encountered a similar query.
She says, “Somebody that I really like asked me this question a few months and ago. She said, ‘Would you rather be a little more happy and less funny or the equal amount of sad and funny?’ I would always pick funny because I think that a lot of happiness that I get is making other people laugh. If you think everything is great you’re never going to make fun of anything. Not even yourself.”
“I’m less funny now than I was last year,” I tell her.
“I don’t necessarily think that,” she says. “When you’re going through something, you’re observing things all the time. Now you can turn on a switch and make observations when you need to. A lot of good times to make observations are from boredom.”
Manisha keeps a newsletter titled sent from manisha’s iphone. It’s a weekly photo diary of cool things she sees while walking around the city with a particular interest in advertising.
She also studied documentary filmmaking at Seneca College and has written and directed two short films. Her first documentary is a satire of the advertising that we see in our everyday lives.
Her latest film S(L)AW is a comedy that was showcased at the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival. She hopes to continue making films that are humorous, and blur the line between documentary and fiction. You can watch her films here.
Most of the time, she works as a consultant.
“A lot of people our age, their thing is their job and their boyfriend or girlfriend and going on vacation with them. I like my job but it’s not my whole life. For a point, I was dying to be with someone just so I could go on vacation with him but then I was like ‘wait, I’m having so much fun in my life.’ I have a job that I’m good at and pays me well and I get to be creative and do comedy and meet all these people,” says Manisha.
Perhaps this is a realization that many people have in their mid-20s, but I feel like for the first time, I’m starting to understand what I really like and don’t like. I now have the time to reflect and start to self-actualize.
“I’ve been reading a lot of funny tweets,” Manisha says. “A 31 year-old woman had an affair with John Tory and that data point should be enough to describe the dating scene in Toronto.”
“Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It’s all funny. Next. Everyone gets so upset about the wrong things.”
―Joan Rivers
Internet Browsing