As a little boy, comedian Jochem Myjer already knew how to make people laugh.At a violin concert, for example, his audience was not clapping, but above alllaughing very hard. That humor felt like his lifebuoy for Jochem, he says inan interview with Coen Verbraak in the TV program Survive. “I was a weirdkid at school. I was also bullied.”
The comedian also says that he was sometimes beaten up. “Then I sat on my bikeand they said: stop you. Then I just got a slap on the face.” In his youthMyjer felt little connection with the rest of his classmates. “I was reallydifferent. During the breaks I often went for a walk along the IJssel on myown.” But a sense of loneliness? The comedian doesn’t know that. “I’ve been ontour for 25 years, sleeping in hotels on my own three days a week. I like thesolitude.”
Jochem Myjer about his tumor operation
But when a tumor is discovered in his spinal cord in 2011, Jochem Myjer getsthe fright of his life. After a risky 13-hour surgery, most of the tumors wereremoved, but it changed his life forever. The busy person has little energyafter his illness. “It just seems like a bad fairy tale,” says the comedianwith a laugh. “I am one of the busiest people in the Netherlands and then Iundergo an operation that gives me an energy problem. It took me a long timeto accept it. I think my energy level is now 50 percent of what it wasbefore.”
However, the difficult period also brought him a lot. “It’s a huge lesson. I> never had to think about my energy, but now I do. I live much more> consciously. If you can only do one thing a day, you are enjoying that one> thing much more. Something I often do is go out into nature on my own. Then> I pack a backpack and I’m gone for four days. I don’t feel handicapped there> for a while.’
‘You really don’t have to run a marathon to be happy’
Sometimes Jochem Myjer still longs for his old self, but in general he ishappier than before. The documentary images from 2019 about his hundredthperformance in the Royal Theater Carré in Amsterdam only confirm this. “It wasnot balanced at all. When I watched that documentary, I thought: what are youdoing man? You are destroying everything. Then I decided to do everythingdifferently. I did that too. I started playing less and less physically.”
Playing a hundredth show in Carré certainly gave Myjer a kick, but when hestarted reflecting, the comedian came to an interesting conclusion. “Iwondered: is it actually cooler than the first time I was in Theater Pepijn inThe Hague? The answer to that is: no.” When he compares the happiness of agood show with taking his children to football on Saturday, he sees littledifference in that either. “There is no degree of happiness. I try to find itcloser to home. So now I’m not going to hike to Norway for four days, but justto the Veluwe. That’s really beautiful. I keep getting my happiness more andmore from the simple things. You really don’t have to run a marathon to behappy: running once is also fun.”