Sermon Illustrations
Comedian Louis C.K. on Our Ingratitude and Impatience
Editor's Note: The video for this illustration contains some objectionable words. This edited transcript has deleted or revised any offensive content.
The sometimes vulgar comedian known as Louis C.K. did a routine that starts with the line, "Everything's amazing right now, but nobody's happy." It obviously struck a chord with people—as of November 2011 the clip had over 4 million views. Here's what he said to poke fun at our ingratitude and impatience:
In my lifetime the changes in the world have been incredible. When I was a kid, we had a rotary phone. We had a phone you had to stand next to, and you had to dial it. Do you realize how primitive that was? You were making sparks. And you would actually hate people who had zeroes in their number because it was more [work]. And then if you called and they weren't home, the phone would just ring lonely by itself.
And then if you wanted money you had to go in the bank—and it was open for like three hours, and you'd stand in line and write a check. And then if you ran out of money, you'd just say, "Well, I just can't do any more things now."
Now we live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on [a] generation of spoiled [people] that don't care. This is what people are like now: they've got their phone, and they go, "Ugh, it won't [work fast enough]."
Give it a second! It's going to space. Will you give it a second to get back from space? Is the speed of light too slow for you?
I was on an airplane, and there was high-speed internet …. And I'm sitting on the plane, and they say, "Open up your laptop, you can go on the internet." It's fast … it's amazing …. And then the thing breaks down. They apologize, "The internet's not working." And the guy next to me says, "[O, great] this [stinks]." Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only ten seconds ago.
People come back from flights, and they tell you their story, and it's a horror story …. [They say], "It was the worst day of my life. First of all, we didn't board for twenty minutes. And then we get on the plane, and they made us sit there on the runway for forty minutes." [And I say,] "O, really, and what happened next? Did you fly in the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight?" Everybody on every plane should be constantly [screaming], "WOW!" You're flying. You're sitting in a chair in the sky!
Here's the thing: People say there are "delays" on flights. Delays, really? New York to California in five hours! It used to take thirty years to do that, and a bunch of you would die on the way.