Who is Actually the Fool?

Maybe the biggest April Fool’s joke is that we believe we shouldn’t be foolish when, in fact, we should!

Let’s face it, fools have fun. Fools are free.

For a woman who feels trained by society to behave and look a certain way, the most significant emotional growth journey I can take is to become more of a fool. This will require me to let go of prescribed ways of being and be my uninhibited self, regardless of others’ judgments of me.

It’s a dare, a risk, but one that feels oh so freeing if you and I allow ourselves to free our foolish selves.

Rather than allowing others’ judgments to define us, we define ourselves and therefore experience NO SHAME OR EMBARRASSMENT BEING OURSELVES! That is self-love, that is emotional mastery!

It makes me think of all the times I didn’t dance, speak up, or otherwise participate in something I was genuinely drawn to doing but didn’t out of fear of looking foolish.

The fear of looking foolish places other people’s opinions above our joy, pleasure, and truth.

I’ll admit I am not yet living at the level of foolishness that I want to be. This is interesting to me because I also consider myself a pretty brave person. Yet, there’s more of me that wants to be fully expressed. I don’t want to censor my Spirit/my Essence as it moves through me and guides me to be me. I want to jump fully into life in more foolish ways without my ego chirping in and making me feel self-conscious about how I look.

What’s important is that you feel authentically guided to move in ways your ego would judge you as foolish. Once, a well-meaning personal development coach had me come on stage at an event to “act foolish” to help me overcome my self-consciousness. Because I forced myself to do it, the result was a total flop and only reiterated my fears of not being funny or likable enough.

Compare my forced foolishness to those who just authentically feel goofy and aren’t afraid to show it, like the people at sporting events who make it on the Jumbotron. Those people are amazing…fun, unselfconscious, carefree, silly, and unafraid to look like a fool. But my response when the Jumbotron camera goes to the audience is to shrink and think, please don’t even accidentally put the camera on me.

On one hand, not wanting to be on camera may seem weird because I shoot video all the time and don’t really feel self-conscious about it. But I also get the final say in what video I release (I have more control of my image), and I feel safer (more understood) with my audience than at a sporting event.

At the last sporting event I went to (Go Bucks!), a woman, probably in her 70s, stood up to dance to get on the Jumbotron. She didn’t care what people thought, and she was having fun.

I don’t want to wait until I’m in my 70s to be the so-called fool. Time is ticking, and I don’t want to look back at my life wishing I danced more, spoke up more, participated more, or allowed myself to be the fool and have more fun doing it. I want to let my Spirit/Essence/Authentic Self move me and act on it. And to be in a place where not acting on my authentic nature would be the weird and foolish way to behave. Because the truth is, I will remember with joy the times I allowed myself to be foolish much more than the times I played it safe.

To all you fools, thank you!

To my especially foolish family, thank you for guiding me to be more foolish.  (My kids are some of my greatest teachers of how fun it is to play the fool. Here’s an example of one night when my husband and I were about to go to bed when my son, Eli, came in with a fake fall. Of course, my daughter had to try, and I did too. Here’s the video of us seeing who can make the best fake fall !).

To anyone who struggles with self-consciousness like me, may this day remind you of your playfulness, innocence, and uninhibited joy!  And may we remember that the path of the fool is really just the path of unconditional love.  That is why we are here, to love each and every aspect of ourselves.