The Fool, the name is both apt and misleading. The Fool is not card about a stupid man who is unable to learn but one of innocence and a willingness to leap into the great unknown and learn. You hear a lot about the beginners mind set and the Fool embodies this idea of being open and unguarded to knowledge. He doesn’t judge it as good, bad or silly and dumb. He sees it all as something to try on, see if it fits.
This trying it on can be terrifying . What if you lose who you really are? But who are you really? You are not a being who lives in a void. The people you interact with, the situations that happen help define you and impact what you are currently learning. There can be a tendency to think “Oh, I know who I am, now.” Here’s the crux once we think that we know. We begin to realize that we are still changing, it never stops. When we refuse to see that knowing who you are is a continuous life long love affair with your self (Yeah, I just bastardized Oscar Wilde.) that never ends. Or at least it shouldn’t.
An unwillingness to change, to move forward, backward, sideways, the failure to move anywhere drags you into stagnation. This stops the energy flowing and working in your life, it get’s harder. Now I am not saying that if you change it will be all sunshine and butterflies, life has hard times but we grow from them. Humans like to think of things moving in straight lines, when very few things in nature are actually straight. Going forward is not the only option. Going backward seems like you are living in the past but if you go back to figure something out so you can move in a different direction, that’s good, healing can need to happen for you to see what’s new. Not ready to go forward take refuge on what’s on the side of your life. See what’s on your personal side lines.
The Fool is the desire to experience life. Taking a leap into the great abyss by stepping off the cliff and seeing what happens. How many times do you think you know what will happen? But when it does occur it is nothing like you imagined, the Fool avoids that trap by living in the moment and being present in what is going on now, not yesterday or the further. Take a leap and discover the unknown in you.
