Here is just an excerpt from a reading I did for my humor class. It's not funny, so sorry if that's a letdown. I just liked it.
"Why do we recommend things to one another, anyway? Why point out the huge, bright, new moon, the funny stuff happening on King of the Hill on television (calling me into the room to watch it with you), the gritty beauty of the waterfront in Gdansk? Why draw one another's attention to all that stuff? Because we wish one another well? Well, maybe, but at its core I do not think this is entirely a matter of altruism. I think it is a wish, a need, a longing to share these things, to feel them together. And it is not quite enough to explain this to say that we are, after all, communal creatures, although I suppose we are. The other component in the explanation is the fact that I need reassurance that this something inside me, the something that is tickled by a joke, is indeed something that constitutes an element of my humanity. I discover something of what it is to be a human being by finding this thing in me, and then having it echoed in you, another human being. "
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