Unicorns don't wear pants and 10 years of marriage 🦄❤️

While getting dressed this morning, my 3yo Gaia casually drops this instant classic out of nowhere: “Unicorns have no pants because they’re horses”.

After my initial burst of laughter, I was struck by the sheer creativity of that sentence.

Was this just me being a proud dad? I bet everyone’s kids say stuff like this all the time…

But where does this magic come from?

I tried tracing it in my mind. She had a unicorn headband and was putting her pants on. She must have been firing connections between a ton of disconnected things in her sphere of awareness. Then, some tiny fraction of those ideas make their way out in the form a full sentence.

Her internal monologue might have gone something like:

I like this unicorn headband, pink t-shirt and pants, do i have unicorn pants to match the unicorn headband? I can have a full unicorn outfit today! That would be so cute. I just see pink pants and spice girls shirt. do spice girls wear unicorn headbands? no but they have leopard pants. do leopards wear pants? that’s silly. do unicorns wear pants? no way, they’re horses!

And maybe this all happens in a split second, leading to her blurting out “unicorns have no pants because they’re horses”… out of seemingly thin air.

It makes me wonder: are the things we say always the tip of an iceberg of quiet thinking in our own heads that precedes a verbalization of an idea? And the more silent thinking we do in our own heads, the less clear to any audience where the idea came from?

This brings me back to some of my most profoundly funny moments during psychedelic trips with friends.

I remember multiple moments sitting around, when someone blurts out something that they seemingly pulled out of a hat, a complete non-sequitur with zero apparent tracing, and the pure surprise of it creates a cascade of associations in each listener’s head, resulting in an eruption of laughter. It “clicks” even though it makes no sense.

When things calm down, I sometimes ask where that gold nugget came from. Most of the time, they either don’t remember or can’t articulate it.

What’s even more interesting, is that we often struggle to articulate exactly why we laugh in those moments! It’s not obvious. There’s some deeply subconscious wiring that triggers a sense of hilarity and humor when someone says something genuinely unexpected that has a kernel of truth to it. It’s simultaneously novel and recognizable.

I suspect the listener needs to be in a very suggestible state as a precondition for the “click” to occur, with full presence. Psychedelics make you suggestible and certainly force you to be present.

Watching my daughter get dressed puts me in a very present state because her entire existence is a magic trick I don’t understand. So watching her do anything feels like an unraveling miracle. She has my full attention.

It’s not a stretch to say that our kids hypnotize us - they’re world class manipulators. They excel at putting us in suggestible states because that’s their best chance at getting what they want.

On a related note, I think the best standup comedians are masters at hypnotizing audiences into a state of suggestibility that allows them to get a roar of laughter by saying the surprising thing that has a kernel of truth to it at the perfect moment.

The beauty of standup comedy is that they bring us along one step at a time, getting us to the verge of thinking we know where it’s going, just to take a complete turn and punch us with a well-timed truth that causes us to laugh for reasons that aren’t always easy to pinpoint.

Jerry Seinfeld said: “kids are the greatest show on earth”. Coming from one of the best comedians of all time, I couldn’t agree more.

I get the greatest show on earth every day, right at home ❤️

Which is a great segue to celebrate a personal milestone with the woman who made me a dad…

🎉 Celebrating 10 years of marriage

Saturday was my ten year wedding anniversary with my beautiful wife Carole, and we spent it with Gaia, George and friends. Just living normal life. We didn’t throw a party or go to a fancy restaurant.

We’ll celebrate properly soon - we like to do things spontaneously. Like that time got married after a year together in Santa Cruz, with no friends or family present. It was a special day for just the two of us.

We told ourselves we’d plan a proper wedding within a year or two. Ten years later, still no wedding. Our friends always tell us how much they wish they could skip the whole wedding thing (maybe they’re just being nice - weddings are so fun).

I’m a very big “follow my gut” guy and knew I wanted to marry Carole three months after we started dating. There was no rationality or logical reasoning to it - I just knew. Somehow the stars lined up and she felt the same way.

Not a day goes by without me feeling a deep sense of gratitude that I get to sit next to her on this giant spaceship whirling through the solar system.

We live a very full life together. It’s a life that can be described as both super simple and unnecessarily complicated, depending who you ask. But it’s ours. We love to spend time together and there’s never a dull moment. We’re always on the move. I mean literally - we walk everywhere.

Carole makes me feel like the luckiest guy in the world because I have the most engaging life I can imagine, with someone who keeps me on my toes and calls me on my bullshit. Everyone who knows Carole loves her.

Happy anniversary, chou chou. Every day with you is a gift. And thanks for putting up with me. Here’s to the next ten years ❤️

That’s it for today, thanks for reading! I have some more stuff to share soon but it feels a bit weird to talk about product management, work, career stuff at the end of this one. See you soon.

Ben