Why the richest man and a beggar laugh at the same joke

Why can't I enjoy the moment, even when the moment is good? Here is a scene from my own notes that I keep coming back to. The richest man on earth and a homeless beggar are sitting in the same audience, watching the same comedy. The same joke lands. Both laugh. In that moment, what is the difference between them?

The short version

• In the second of the laugh, nothing about wealth or poverty is present. Neither man is remembering what he has or lacks; the book's claim is that identity exists only while attention is building it
• So the happiness of the laugh is the same for both. It was not added by circumstances, and it is not reduced by them. In the book's language, it was uncovered, not earned
• There is a third person in the row who did not laugh. He heard the sound. His attention was at work, or at home, or on the bill, and the joke went past him
• Or he laughs a second late, because the others did, which is a thought about the laugh and not the joke
• The question "why can't I enjoy the moment" is, on the map, almost never about the moment. It is about where attention was when the moment came

The scene

Picture the two of them. One has more money than some countries. The other slept outside last night. For the length of the film they are twenty rows apart and could not be further apart in every other way.

Then the joke lands. For about a second, both of them are nothing but the laugh. The rich man is not, in that second, a rich man; he is not thinking about the villa, the deal, the lawsuit. The beggar is not, in that second, a beggar; he is not thinking about tonight, or the cold, or what the rich man has. Neither of them is remembering anything or wanting anything. They are both simply hearing a joke and finding it funny.

Now picture the man between them. He paid for his ticket too. He is looking at the screen. But he is thinking about something his manager said, and by the time the joke arrives it has nowhere to land. He either does not laugh, or he laughs half a second after everyone else, because everyone else did, and then wonders what he missed.

Three people, one joke. Two of them got it for free. The third paid for it and did not get it.

What the map says is happening

The Present Attention and Happiness Matrix sorts every moment of attention into nine attention states: past, present or future, combined with liking, disliking or neutral.

Which of these does your mind visit most? See your mind score - free.

The book makes a claim about happiness that this scene is built to show. In its account, happiness and distress reach you only through contact: something has to come in through one of the senses, including the mind, before it can touch your mental state. Wealth is not a sensory input. Poverty is not a sensory input. They are thoughts, and thoughts have positions: "I have this" is Past + Likes (nostalgia) or Present + Likes (holding), "I do not have that" is Present + Dislikes (resistance) or Future + Dislikes (worry). In the second of the laugh, none of those thoughts is running. The laugh is the same because, for that second, neither of them is anyone.

My book puts it in the form of a question about a person with a serious illness watching a film: while their attention is absorbed in the story, are they, in that moment, a patient? The diagnosis has not changed. But the identity exists only while attention is engaged in thoughts about it, and for those two hours it is not. The book's conclusion is blunt: you are not your circumstances, you are the thought patterns about your circumstances. The rich man and the beggar are the same claim, from the other direction. The circumstances could not be more different. The laugh is identical, because the circumstances are not in the room.

This is why the book describes the happiness of presence as unconditional: it does not depend on circumstances being any particular way. Its claim is that this happiness is uncovered, not added. The joke did not give the beggar something he lacked. It interrupted, for a second, the thoughts that were covering what was already there. The post on how to be happy is the longer version of that claim.

The third person in the row

The man who did not laugh is the one most readers will recognise, because he is the one asking why can't I enjoy the moment.

On the map, his answer is simple and a little humbling. The moment was fine. The joke was as good for him as for the other two. But attention was not there to receive it. It was in Past + Dislikes (regret), replaying the manager, or in Future + Dislikes (worry), rehearsing tomorrow. The book's account of thought chains explains how he got there: one thought about the manager started the next, and the chain had run for twenty minutes by the time the joke arrived, with nothing to interrupt it. The joke was the interruption, and it was not strong enough.

The late laugh is worth its own line. When he laughs because the others laughed, attention has arrived, but not at the joke. It has arrived at the laughter, which is already a second old, and at the thought "I must have missed something". That is a thought about the moment, in the past row, and it has the flavour of a small loss. The book's claim about the senses applies here too: the sound of laughter reached his ears as a Present + Neutral first thought, and the second thought was already about the past.

The people around him are not better at enjoying things. They were simply not somewhere else when the thing arrived.

It is not the money

It is tempting to read the scene as a lesson about wealth, and it is not one. The book is careful here, and so am I. The rich man is not happier because he is rich; the beggar is not happier because he is free of possessions. In the laugh, neither fact is operating. The point is narrower and more useful: the position decides the experience, not the bank balance.

My book has a related observation about comparison. When the world's richest person buys something extravagant, most of us feel nothing; when a colleague at our level buys the same thing, we feel it at once. The ego, in the book's account, engages only within its comparison range. The beggar in the audience is not comparing himself to the rich man twenty rows away, for the same reason you do not: the gap is too large to register. So even outside the laugh, the comparison that could spoil the moment is not available to him. The post on why you compare yourself to others covers that range in detail.

What spoils the moment is never the other man. It is the thought, in whichever row it sits, that arrived before the joke and would not move. The post on I will be happy when looks at the commonest of those thoughts: the one that puts happiness in a condition that has not been met yet, so that a good moment now is not allowed to count.

What to do, from the book

The book's practice does not try to make moments better. It works on the thing the scene shows: where attention is when the moment comes.

1. Recognise the position. When you notice a good thing going past you, a joke, a view, a child saying something, do not reach for the thing. Look at where attention was. Name it: "Future + Dislikes", "Past + Dislikes".
2. Understand what it does. The book's claim is that each visit to a position outside the centre costs something in the present, whether the thought is pleasant or not. The replay of the manager cost one joke. Seeing the price is what makes the next step possible.
3. Return to the senses. The screen, the sound in the room, the seat under you. In the book's account the physical senses hand attention a Present + Neutral first thought the moment they are given something to notice. The next joke lands where the last one did not.

The practice does not promise that you will laugh at everything. It promises that you will be in the room when the funny thing happens, which, on the map, is the whole of what the other two had.

What this does not do

This post uses the Present Attention and Happiness Matrix, the author's own model from The Return of Attention. It describes experience, not a diagnosis. How the matrix works.

It does not say that poverty does not matter, or that the beggar's situation is fine because he laughed. Circumstances matter enormously for everything that is not the laugh: safety, food, dignity, the night ahead. The scene is about one second, and only about where attention is in it.

It does not say you should feel happy in every moment, or that failing to enjoy something is a fault. Attention leaves; in the book's account that is what minds do, and noticing it is the practice, not a reproach.

It does not diagnose. If nothing has felt enjoyable for two weeks or more, if you have lost interest in things you used to care about, or if you have thoughts of harming yourself, please talk to a doctor or a crisis line. "Why can't I enjoy anything" over weeks is a different question from "why did I miss that joke", and this post is only about the second.

Common questions

Why can't I enjoy the moment even when it is good? On the map, usually because attention was somewhere else when the moment came: in a replay or a forecast. The moment was fine. The book's claim is that the position decides the experience, not the moment.

Why do the richest man and the beggar laugh at the same joke? Because in the second of the laugh, neither wealth nor poverty is present; they are thoughts, and the thoughts are not running. In the book's account, identity exists only while attention is building it, so for that second the two men are the same.

Is happiness really the same for rich and poor? The book does not claim that life is the same. It claims that the happiness of presence, the kind in the laugh, is unconditional: it does not depend on circumstances being any particular way. Everything outside that second depends on circumstances a great deal.

What about the person who laughs late? On the map, attention arrived at the laughter rather than the joke, which is already a thought about something a second old. The late laugh is a small example of a pleasant moment turning into a thought about the moment, which is the subject of why feeling good is the blind spot.

How do I start enjoying the moment again? The book's practice: notice where attention was when the moment passed you, name the position, and return to a sense. Not to feel more; to be there. The starting point is Present + Neutral.