On the first day of this year I had a post about Jerry Seinfeld at at 3 Quarks Daily:
Seinfeld On His Craft, Or: Comedy As A Path To Metaphysical Grace.
That post is based on this podcast with Tim Ferriss:
There’s some discussion of depression at c. 51:05:
A lot of my life is, I don’t like getting depressed, I get depressed a lot, I have the feeling, and these routines, these very difficult routines, whether its exercise or writing, and both of them are things like where it’s brutal....[on to his daughter]...
Later at 54:16, after Ferriss talked about his own depressive episodes:
Ferriss: Is there anything else that has contributed to your ability to either stave off or mitigate depressive episodes or manage?
Seinfeld: No. I still get them. The best thing I ever heard about it was that it’s part of a kit that comes with a creative aspect to the brain, that a tendency to depression always seems to accompany that. And I read that like 20 years ago and that really made me happy. So I realized well I wouldn’t have all this other good stuff without, that that just comes in the kit.
Seinfeld goes on to observe that he doesn’t know a human that doesn’t have the tendency, though he’s sure it varies.
He also discussed spirituality with Mark Maron. Starting at about 59:58, Maron asks him if he’s a “spiritual guy”, “yes,” though
JS: Not in any conventional terms...
MM: ... How do you define that? If you have a full spiritual life that you’re comfortable in your heart that enables you to not seek that type of satisfaction from comedy, what do you do?
JS: Well, comedy’s very spiritually satisfying. You’re risking your own personal comfort to make total stranger happy, make them feel good, for just a moment.
MM: Right.
JS: That’s a spiritual act.
MM: Okay. And what else do you do?
JS: I try and be good to people, all the time, you know, with strangers, when I’m driving.
MM: Yeah.
JS: I try and, I’m always trying to be generous to people.
MM: And do you have a practice of any kind?
JS: No.
MM: No religion thing that you do.
JS: No. I mean I’m Jewish and we celebrate some of the big ones, you know.
And then into his brush with Scientology. He took one course when he was in New York in 1975. It gave him an emphasis on ethical behavior.
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