Chasing After The Car.

Did anyone else catch the premier of Matthew Perry's new TV comedy, "Go On", Wednesday night? If you didn't, here's the gist: Matthew plays an "irreverent but charming" sportscaster who has recently lost his wife in a car accident, and he's required by his employer to attend ten sessions of a support group designed to help him deal with that loss. The plot seems to revolve around the contrast of the support group leader's method of sharing feelings and talking through emotions, and Matthew's character's idiom: "Enough talk, just go DO something". The pilot finds him viewing the sessions as a waste of his time: he just wants to get back to, and on with, his life.

At his second session, he's paired up with a young man who brings out his phone. As he flips through some images on his phone, he tells Matthew about the Google Maps car with the camera on top of it, and how people sometimes follow this car and engage in some sort of antics. He shows images taken from the car of people in costumes; jumping, laughing, enjoying themselves. The young man then shares that this was something his brother showed him one day before he fell into a coma - the very loss he's there to deal with.

I'm telling you about this because of a moment at the end of the episode. We find the group assembled, with Matthew's character finally sharing something about his own personal loss. He abruptly stops, rises from his chair, and proclaims that they all need to go outside right then: it's the Google Maps car, and we suddenly find the group chasing after it with toy swords, funny hats, and plastic body armour. They're playful; they're laughing. You can almost see their respective weights lift off of their shoulders, even if just for those few moments. They are being juvenile, together, and the catharsis of that behavior shines through. They are able to shift that burden off of themselves, even if only for that minute.

I think that's why, when a group of us who have diabetes (or a very personal connection to it) get together, things get pretty silly. It's why we love memes. It's why we're often irreverent and why we need humor in the face of our own sorts of loss.

We're having our own "chase after the car" moments.

I've said it before, and I do mean it: levity is as essential to my health as insulin.

*Unrelated to this post, but still relevant to your interests, probably: head over to the You Can Do This Project site and watch the video published today. As many others who attended the Roche Social Media Summit can attest, Josh Bliel made quite an impact. Also, I'm pretty sure this is the first video contributed to YCDT by someone with no personal connection to diabetes - so there's that.