Most people place a great deal of importance and priority on what they know and on control. Yet as I help my clients realize, both knowledge and control-while valuable-are over-rated in their power to create happiness and peace in life. So if being in control with lots of knowledge doesn’t create the happiness and peace we are all seeking, what does? My answer may surprise you-it’s the wisdom to be a fool.
In the Tarot, “The Fool” represents the highest potential for your life; where each day is an adventure to be lived without fear and with trust in where the Universe is taking you. The Fool invites you to place your faith and trust in life and to embrace your courage for realizing happiness and success. The Fool believes in their heart and follows it no matter how crazy or foolish this may seem to others. The Fool is the spirit of who you truly are, expressed and experienced as wonder, innocence, curiosity and delight. You may not know what the future holds, but the Fool invites you to take a chance on yourself and life, with courage and faith.
We are discouraged from choosing the wisdom to be a fool for instead, being in control and in charge. I have learned how powerful being a fool is in most aspects of my life, but especially when it comes to love and happiness. For example, my choice to extend love and support as a parent, to a child who was being unkind to me, was said to be a fool’s choice by my parents. I must admit it was not always the easier choice to extend love versus being unkind back. Yet within me, I knew it wiser to be a fool for love than to simply talk about love but not back it up with my actions.
Being a fool for love, for a dream, for your life requires you know how to listen to your heart and soul as well as you take action on their wisdom. We are taught to entrust facts and figures for being safe and realizing our dreams in life. Yet information without heart, without being held to your deepest values, will result in choices harmful to your happiness and your relationships in life. The soul of your life requires your willingness to engage the mystery of your life for realizing happiness and love in life. The wisdom of a fool indeed!
So how can you embrace the wisdom to be a fool?
1. Choose to embrace the mystery of life more than trying to control life. We are taught our security and safety come from living by what we control and are in charge of in life. This industrial model of life requires a certainty and a consistency to each day and each person we meet, that simply is not realistic nor human’s nature. Instead, become curious again about each day and the people important to you versus constraining them by your expectations of them in your life.
2. Learn how what falls apart in your life is your soul calling, not the failure of someone or something. What falls apart in your life is life removing what does not serve you, making room for your soul in life. Be is a relationship in crisis, health under siege, or the despair which comes from living your fate and not your destiny, within the ashes of what has fallen apart is your holy invitation to your life’s magic and much bigger purpose.
3. Learn the difference between the facts you’ve been handed and your truth. While it is a fact your parents raised you through their beliefs and rules for life, the truth is once you leave their home you get to choose. Yet, every single client I have worked with has struggled with living their sovereignty, which requires they claim their own beliefs and rules for their life. When you do not claim what is true for you-updating the rules and beliefs you grew up with-you will find yourself blaming others for feeling unhappy in life. Claiming your sovereignty is simple to do with some guidance and support.
4. Learn how what challenges you is life’s invitation to create, not facts to resign yourself to. History is full of people who have made a better world through living this truth. Those who trusted their imagination and then took action, created the wheel, the airplane, the internet, etc. All were called fools first and brilliant second. By not being bound to information as truth, these fools made practical improvements from the mystery of their imagination. What might your imagination grace your life with, if you but trusted it and took action on it?
So where might your life be inviting you to live your wisdom as a fool?
Take a suggestion from me and take a chance on being a fool for love, a fool for happiness, a fool for your life. Believing the facts and figures of life will make you and your relationships happy is not wisdom. To realize more love and happiness in life will require you let go of control and take a risk for love. What is most valuable in life isn’t found in what and who you believe you control in life. What is truly most valuable in life is realized through your choosing the wisdom to be a fool for the mystery and magic of love and life.