Chicken flavored breakthroughs

Traveling in buses through Africa is an experience unlike any other. The world passes by endlessly, as if it were running on a treadmill. It's in this downtime that I've actually had a chance to think. A chance to let my mind completely wander wherever it wants to go. The other day it chose to focus on a chicken crossing the road.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.

I never understood this joke before. Never found it funny. Often wondering how and why it had such a long shelf life. How was this one of the jokes that survived the test of time? It's not funny. I know funny. I get paid to be funny. And I know that this joke, unlike many a knock knock joke or a horse walking into a bar joke, is not funny. It never has been. As a child I dismissed this joke as being too dumb to get. This joke, I figured, was a joke for simple folks. The kind of folks that find Full House and Family Cirlce funny. Clearly I am not one of these people, my brand of humor is far more sophisticated. Or so I thought...stupid little fat kid.

I now understand the joke, the entire time it seems, was on me.

All this time I was looking for something more than the answer I had, because the answer I had wasn't funny. To get to the other side? That's it? Really? That's the big payoff? It can't be. But it can, and it is. That's the answer and I get it now. The joke I spent my life grappling with, trying to understand, turns out to not be a joke at all, and that's precisely what makes it funny. This joke, it appears, is a lesson.

Why else would a chicken cross the road?

The lesson here is simple. Sometimes there isnt always a deeper meaning to everything. Sometimes there is no hidden message. Sometimes things are just what they are.

It's a good lesson to learn. I think we've been raised to always question things. To overanalyze everything. To find the deeper meaning in it all. Wether its life, love, religion or the universe. We need to know the meaning behind it all. We need to know why the sky is blue instead of just accepting that it is. We need to know why we are here, what we're supposed to be doing, when it will all end, and what the whole point of being here in the first place is. We can't be satisfied with just being.

The chicken taught me to just be. Just accept life as it comes. Don't look for the deeper meaning, because then you lose the meaning entirely. Looking for something more, and you may miss what's right in front of you. The chicken needed to get to the other side of the road, so he crossed it. Nothing less, nothing more. That's one smart chicken.