Before I Die, I Want to Understand This
The two great mysteries I can’t explain but can’t live without.
There are only two things (maybe three) that I want to understand before I die:
Humor and music.
Not how they work, mechanically.
Not their history, not their cultural function, not their evolutionary utility.
I want to understand what they are.
Why do I laugh when I see a man trip on the sidewalk?
Why do specific vibrations in the air — frequencies, tones, rhythms — make me feel something so profound that it bypasses language?
Let’s start with the first one.
Why do we laugh when someone trips and falls?
It’s not kind.
It’s not logical.
It’s not even consistent; if the same man falls harder or gets hurt, I might gasp instead. But in the proper context, with the right timing, the surprise, and the harmlessness of it, something inside me cracks open, and I laugh.
But why?
I’ve read the theories — incongruity, relief, superiority. I’ve listened to clever comedians dissect the craft. And still, I don’t feel any closer to understanding the thing itself.
Laughter doesn’t feel like an idea.
It feels like a reflex from the soul.
And then there’s music.
What is this sorcery?
Certain sounds, arranged in a certain way, at a certain tempo…
And I am undone.
No one taught me how to feel it.
I didn’t memorize scales to access it.
Music just knew where to find me.
Sometimes a song doesn’t just accompany my feelings — it creates them.
Sometimes a lyric bypasses my intellect and lands like truth I’ve always known but never heard out loud.
And when music and humor collide — don’t even get me started.
A well-placed chord in a comedy sketch, or a perfectly-timed silence in a musical — those moments are alchemy.
I’m a reasonably intelligent person.
I can explain geopolitics.
I can diagram nuclear reactor systems.
But ask me to explain why a joke lands — or why the bridge of a certain song makes me cry — and I’m speechless.
So maybe the point isn’t to explain them.
Maybe the point is to honor them.
Maybe these two things — laughter and music — are the raw signatures of something divine.
Maybe they’re reminders that the best parts of being alive are also the least explainable.
Humor and music seem to speak the languages of mystery and joy — the ones we knew as children, before we learned to be articulate and rational and deeply confused.
I still want to understand them.
I may never get there.
But I will keep listening, and laughing, and chasing the mystery.
Because I suspect that in the end, that’s all understanding ever was.
BTW - The third thing that I’d like to understand is why we dream, but I’ll save that for another day.
Matt DiGeronimo is a writer, thinker, and contrarian who simplifies the complex and challenges conventional wisdom. Please message me for public speaking or coaching opportunities.
Music has the power to undo me and stitch me back together. Great post!
As someone who has spent a lifetime editing over 150 books and writing 25 of my own—and now pens Celestial Love Letters to make sense of soul, science, and spirit—I too often find myself caught in the crossfire between what we know, what we feel, and what we are still trying to name.
Your piece beautifully echoes a yearning I have long held: before I die, I want to understand why we treat those not like us as less human.
It baffles me deeply.
Religious devotees call atheists lost. Atheists call believers deluded. And yet both claim to stand for truth. Political loyalists label opposing citizens anti-national while waving flags in the same wind. People belonging to one caste, country, skin tone, or gender identity forget that we all share the same fragile breath.
Why does difference spark such disdain?
Perhaps that is the one sacred truth I seek more than anything: not some universal answer, but a universal empathy. The kind that turns down the volume on “us vs. them” and tunes into “we are all just trying to find peace before we go.”
Thank you for this piece. It reminded me why I write.
—Ranjit K. Sharma
✍️ Author. Editor. Seeker.
🌌 celestialloveletters.substack.com
🌍 #SpiritualityWithRanjit