Life Lessons from a Coke Machine: The Ecstasy of the Unexpected

אז ימלא שחוק פינו

Unforeseen Delight

Have you ever been staggered with gladness? Have you ever been caught off guard by something small and ordinary but delighted by the sheer surprise of it? There's something particularly elating about the unexpected—a gift from a stranger, an unpredicted punchline, an unbelievable sports play, a playfully startled baby—that evokes within us joy and laughter unlike those from any other source.

Below is a promotional video from Coca Cola that shows various gleeful college students brought to laughter by a Coke machine. Coke's message, apparently, is that in some vague way Coke brings people happiness. Some might rightly point out that giving anyone something for nothing would make them smile. But I think the real power here is not what was given, but the unexpectedness of how it was done. I wonder with the author of A GeekyMomma's Blog, writes, "if the same machine doled out jokes, a handshake, or perhaps wrote a check to a non-profit organization, if the reaction might be very similar."

What do you think? Watch and decide for yourself:

What struck me most about my reaction to this video is how happy it made me seeing other people getting gladdened like this. And writing that last sentence made me realize how insufficiently our language includes references to making other people happy. In contrast, the root of Hebrew's most common word for happiness, שמחה, is regularly used as לְשַׂמִֵחַ for that purpose. This might reflect the ease of Hebrew conjugation, but this usage dates back at least to the Book of Psalms, and is firmly embedded within Jewish culture.) GeekyMom is taking this one step further with a delightful contest, where, starting today readers post videos to YouTube of themselves being "Happiness Machines" (á la the Coke machine) for a chance to win a Lenovo M90z computer (I kid you not!).

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And Now for Something Completely Different: or Laughing All the Way to...

This kind of unexpected joy is what the sages, חז“ל call שְׂחוֹק, and it has an important mystical/eschatological meaning. This feeling was embedded into the our collective spiritual identity during the very birth of כלל ישראל (the Jewish people) in the person of יִצְחַק. When Sara, at 90 years old and infertile from youth, bore an unexpected son it was this distinctive delight that Avraham acknowledged with the child's name (the root of "Isaac" is similar to שחוק). This joy, Jews believe, will ultimately be revealed in its full form one day when the world joins together to serve Hashem. Then, אַז, when evil and darkness are be overturned abruptly and absolutely, G-d will be exalted, the world will be filled with the ecstasy of the unexpected, and we will be filled with joyous song. And in case you were wondering, that is what you've been talking about every week for all these years: אז ימלא שחוק פינו ולשוננו רנה.

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All right, this post was kind of messianistic, but can you blame me? I mean, what do you think of when you see Coca Cola YouTube videos??