A joke about getting attached to an idea
Transcript of this video:
The other day, I was reading up on someone’s change process because I was interested in their work, and they described their process as transformational, and I noticed I was struggling, for some reason, with reading about it, and my mind wandered, as it happens, to a joke that I first heard about 30 years ago, which I thought I’d share with you.
It’s the story of the amazing hammer man. The amazing hammer man is one of those alternative cabaret acts. He’s the headline act of this particular show and he bounds onto the stage, introduces himself, and as is the wont of these people, calls onto the stage his delightful assistant who is bringing the hammer.
Well, it’s more like a mallet, really. A big, hefty wooden thing. He calls for a volunteer from the audience, who is of course invited to inspect the hammer and verify that is indeed a very heavy object. And then he persuades this audience member to hit him over the head with it because he is the amazing hammer man who has trained himself to withstand such violence.
Well, it takes a bit of persuading, but the audience member finally decides that he will do that. So he swings the mallet hammer in the air and hits the amazing hammer man squarely on the head. And the amazing hammer man falls flat on the ground.
He is out cold. The audience wonders briefly if this is some comedy act and then realizes, no, this is real. A couple of doctors who happen to be in the audience come onto the stage, an ambulance is summoned and the amazing hammer man is stretchered off to hospital accompanied by the distraught audience member who feels obliged to see what happens.
Well in the hospital, it’s late at night, obviously and the doctors eventually come to the audience member to tell him that the patient is in a dire state and isn’t expected to make it through the night.
So the audience member holds vigil through the night, but in the morning, amazingly, the patient has just about survived the night. He isn’t expected to make it through the day, but the receptionist at the hospital sends the audience member home to get some rest.
He comes back a couple of times during the day to check on the state of the patient. It hasn’t changed. He comes back the next day and the next. Still the amazing hammer man tenuously clings to life.
Well as is the way with these stories, days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and gradually the audience member, though still distraught, makes less and less frequent visits to the hospital. Indeed, months and years pass, and he now is only occasionally ringing the hospital on the off chance, still riven with grief over what he’s done.
Until after many years, one day he calls the hospital and the receptionist says, “Oh, it’s funny you should call today, because this morning the patient woke up.” “He woke up?” says the audience member astonished. “Yes,” says the receptionist. “He woke up and spoke.” “He spoke?” “What did he say?” “He said, ‘Ta dah!'”
I’ve inflicted this joke on a few of my friends over the Christmas holidays and I apologize for inflicting it on you. And I’ll leave you to reach your own conclusions about the connection between this story and transformational change. But thanks for being here. I hope to be here all year.
