-Hi, everybody.
I don't know.
How do you guys want to play this?
You know, I feel like --
I've been thinking a lot about life and death, you know?
My buddy believes in heaven.
And I asked him what his idea of heaven was, and he said,
"When I die, I believe that I'll be reunited
for eternity with all of my family
that passed away before me."
And I thought, "Is that what we want?"
[ Laughter ]
Do you want to be reunited with your family for eternity?
If I die right now and see my whole family on a cloud
and they're like, "Hey, Dov."
I'd be like, "Yeah, hey!"
[ Laughter and applause ]
I'll stop by and all, you know,
but I'm not doing eternity over there.
I mean, I think we can all agree
the last 30 Thanksgivings have not gone smoothly, you know?
I don't know.
The point is, I can't satisfy a woman.
[ Laughter and applause ]
I've been -- I've been married.
I'm married two years now,
and I'm in couples therapy with my wife.
And I love her very much,
but I'm still trying to figure out
how to talk to her, you know,
and, like, how to communicate.
My wife comes from a small town in Canada,
and she tends to be a little under-expressive,
a little passive aggressive,
and I tend to maybe say too much, you know?
But if I'm wrong, correct me!
If you're wrong, let me correct you!
It's a better life that way, you know?
I'm driving.
I'm driving near a beach,
and my wife points in the distance.
And she said, "Look at that lifehouse."
Lifehouse, with an "F."
Apparently, she's been under the impression her whole life
that a lighthouse is called a lifehouse.
And so I said -- I said --
All I said is, "That's a lighthouse."
And she said, "That's what I said."
And I said [Clears throat] "No. You know, that --
that's not what you s--
You said lifehouse with an "F," you know?"
And then you could feel a cold, Canadian wind
blow through the car.
[ Laughter and applause ]
And she goes -- she goes, "Well, you know everything."
And I was like, "I, you know, I mean --
[ Clears throat ]
Honey, I don't know every -- I mean [Clears throat]
I know this," you know?
What am I, making -- What's it? An ego thing?
I know the name of the object.
I'm not trying to make a big deal out of it, you know?
But then I reali-- I reali--
You know, since I've been in therapy
and I'm getting all there hopefully psychologically,
you know, I realize I don't have to argue about every instance.
And so, I just took a deep breath and said, "Okay,"
and I kept driving, you know?
I was proud of myself.
I then we were pulling into the hotel at night,
and I stayed with the breathing and I just put my hand on hers
and I just said -- I just said, "Honey, I mean -- I mean,
it's got a damn light on it, you know?"
Like, I don't want to --
[ Laughter and applause ]
You know what I mean?
I'm not trying to make a big deal out of it.
I'm just saying. [ Clears throat ]
You know, I mean, I don't want to argue.
I'd rather get a divorce than call it a lifehouse,
but I don't want to argue, you know?
[ Laughter ]
So that happened -- that happened on a Friday.
And then on Monday, we walk in to couples therapy,
and I didn't realize my wife was still holding on
to all of that energy, and I --
The way couples therapy works is you walk in,
and the therapist says, "How is everything?"
And before I had a chance to sit down,
my wife goes [Whimpers]
and she goes, "I-I said lifehouse, and he flipped out."
And I said, "That's not an accurate characterization
of what happened."
I said, "She did say 'lifehouse,'
and I said, you know, the word --
Tell her the word," you know? "It's lighthouse!
If you could tell it to my wife,
we could move on with our lives!"
What's this? A couples-therapy issue?
It's reality! It's just a word, right?"
But the therapist won't say anything.
He's looking for something deeper and he said,
"This seems really important to you."
And then I was like, "I don't know, man.
I mean, important, not important.
You know, we have words for things."
I always thought the idea of a society
is that there's some shared language.
Otherwise, we're all pointing at objects,
making up our own term, you know?
And that would be chaos!
My wife is tearing down society, you understand?
[ Laughter and applause ]
So then -- No, I appreciate it, but it's like --
And then we leave therapy. You know?
It's going okay, our life for the next 20 minutes.
And we stop at a coffee shop
and my wife is looking through her Instagram.
And it occurred to me,
Instagram is making everybody's life
a little bit worse, you know?
Because there's no way you can feel as good about your life
when comparing it to an Instagram.
Like, because Instagram's not a life, it's a moment.
It's a snapshot of a moment from a life.
It's a commercial for a life.
If you would have seen my wife's Instagram
from our terrible weekend,
you would have thought we were the Kennedys on summer break.
The sun is in the right place, my wife is sipping a wine.
There's a -- She's got a heel up.
There's a dog catching a Frisbee midair.
There's no picture of us having a divorce-level argument
over a stupid lifehouse!
Have a good night, everybody.
Thank you for listening. God bless.
♪♪♪♪
[ Cheers and applause ] -Oh, my goodness!
Oh!
Dov Davidoff, everybody!
For more, check out dovdavidoff.net.