Valerie Schultz: April 1 is a fool's paradise
| Wednesday, Mar 31 2010 04:16 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Mar 31 2010 04:16 PM
The day of fools is upon us once again, wherein we try to make a monkey out of someone else by playing pranks or telling tall tales. Today is a day to treat everything that happens with suspicion and skepticism so that the joke is not on you. But April 1 is also an appropriate day to mention those times in life when being a fool is, oddly, a sign of wisdom.
Or, rather than "being a fool," perhaps I should say "playing the fool." When we play the fool, we are consciously using humor or self-ridicule to good purpose. Fools can disarm others, making them feel more comfortable and giving them permission to be honest and open in their communication. We all have that one friend who is so at home in his or her own skin that playing the fool seems a natural and sincere quality, one that invites others to loosen up and let go.
We parents play the fool to our advantage sometimes, as a way to delve into our children's hearts, and as a way to demonstrate the unconditional love we have for them. My husband and I find that the family jokes and stories that our children enjoy the most are often at the expense of our dignity, and involve one or both of us looking like a fool. What they don't get, and perhaps won't realize until they are parents, is that we would go to any length of foolishness on their behalf, and we are delighted to use our perceived lunacy as a family glue, a bond of goofiness.
A fool's goal can seem impossible. "O! I am Fortune's fool," howls Romeo, one of Shakespeare's doomed lovers, after doing exactly the wrong thing, the thing that will seal his unhappy fate and bar him from Juliet's presence, the thing he had expressly vowed not to do. By murdering Juliet's cousin Tybalt, Romeo assures that he will be forever banished, and thus bring on Fortune's cruelty and love's tragedy. He feels like a fool for having believed that he could change the course of fate.
But what fool doesn't think he or she, against all odds, can impact an intransigent world? A fool is undeterred by harsh reality, or cold statistics. I think of the foolish man the Beatles sang about, the one nobody saw or listened to or liked, whose head was in the clouds. He was practically invisible, his words and deeds considered inconsequential. Yet he persisted: "The fool on the hill / Sees the sun going down / And the eyes in his head / See the world spinning round . . ." A fool is often faulted by a rigid society.
When my third-born daughter participated in the Junior Miss program in high school five years ago, we attended a mother/daughter tea. As we sipped our Darjeeling and nibbled our cookies, each Junior Miss hopeful got up and told the group what she loved about her mother. One after another, a girl took the floor and revealed how her mom was her best friend, or how her mom was the most wonderful cook, or how her mom volunteered every day at her school, or saved the whales, or fought off a serial killer with just an umbrella. Actually, I made up those last two, but the general idea was to tell the assembled listeners what was so great about one's mother. When it was my daughter's turn, she said something like, "The thing I love about my mom is that she's not afraid to look stupid. She really isn't!" Then she sat down. And while I knew she meant it in the best possible way, I admit to feeling a bit under-whelmed by her tribute.
But she was home for a visit from Portland a week ago, and when I was thinking aloud about April Fools Day, she reminded me of the statement she'd made at that tea. She said that, while her words might have sounded less than flattering back then, she meant exactly the same thing that I was now presenting: that sometimes you have to risk the ridicule or condemnation of others -- you have to let go of the fear of looking stupid -- in the course of taking a stand. You have to be willing to endure being dismissed as a fool. And I realized that I had been mistaken to feel let down at that long-ago tea, when she had in fact been offering me very high praise, higher than I deserved.
Love, of course, is often the greatest motivator of foolishness. A person in love cares nothing for appearance or convention, as long as he or she can bask in the presence of the beloved. Love answers the question posed by the singer of "What kind of fool am I?": "Why can't I fall in love / Till I don't give a damn / And maybe then I'll know / What kind of fool I am . . ."
In other words, in yet another twist of logic in the conundrum we call life, the wisest fool usually turns out to be nobody's fool.
