You're a Fool!

Hey there ,

In this week’s edition:

• The fear of looking foolish

• Why the fool has power

• Comedy, truth, and risk

• Flatland

• Trusting the fool within

I don’t know how much time I’ve spent trying to look good.

Trying to sound good.

Trying to get it right.

Most of us spend a huge amount of energy trying to avoid embarrassment.

We measure our words.

We manage impressions.

We edit ourselves in real time.

Somewhere along the way, being careful became a survival skill.

The cost is that creativity dries up.

Emotion stays hidden.

We play it safe and call it maturity.

The Fool’s Job

In mythology, the fool is always close to the ruler.

Not to flatter, but to puncture the ego.

The fool says what no one else will say.

He points at the emperor and names what everyone else is pretending not to see.

The most childish, controlling leaders work hard to kill all the creative truth-tellers in the realm.

They can’t tolerate it.

In our time, that role has often been filled by comedians.

Chaplin. Lenny Bruce. George Carlin.

Today it’s people like Colbert, Kimmel, Chappelle, Bill Burr, Sarah Silverman, Theo Von, and plenty of others.

They aren’t just going for laughs.

They’re pressing on the places where culture has gone stiff, dishonest, or scared.

When it lands, it’s funny.

When it cuts deeper, it’s uncomfortable.

That’s the point.

Risk and Backlash

There is real courage in going against the tide and risking foolishness.

Especially these days.

Hyper-sensitivity is everywhere.

On all sides.

People with rigid beliefs get easily offended because certainty feels safer than curiosity.

When someone challenges the story, the response is often outrage.

It’s no different when we try to be emotionally honest in a culture that doesn’t know what to do with genuine self-expression.

To many people, it will look inappropriate, reckless, or foolish.

Why the Fool Gets It

This is why comedians tend to stick together.

They understand the risk.

They respect it.

They know what it costs to tell the truth out loud.

Show me a great comedian who hasn’t lived through pain or done some inner work.

It’s not accidental.

When you’ve been through it, you see through the nonsense faster.

You’re less impressed by appearances.

Telling the truth is not easy. It never has been.

Flatland

The parable Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbott Abbott tells the story of a flat, two-dimensional world with only squares and lines.

Everyone is sure they fully understand reality.

Then a Sphere shows up on the horizon with depth—something they literally can’t see.

At first, only one person can see it.

To them, he sounds crazy and dangerous, not wise.

He’s ridiculed and punished.

The problem isn’t that he’s wrong. It’s that his idea doesn’t fit their world.

The lesson is simple: new truth always looks foolish at first.

If no one is willing to risk looking like a fool, nothing deeper ever gets through.

Trusting the Fool Within

Like a lot of things in popular culture, we may have this backwards.

Maybe the fool is the wisest one in the room.

The fool within us is the part willing to risk being seen.

Willing to say what feels true before it’s polished.

Willing to let emotion and creativity come forward without guarantees.

If we want a real life, not just a well-managed one, we may have to trust that part of ourselves more.

Einstein said, “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

It might look foolish.
It might be the smartest move we can make.

Let me know if you can relate to this. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Just hit reply (we publish a monthly roundup of your experience, strength, and hope).

Foolishly,

Bob

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