Fools!

            Once upon a time, a while back, there was me and there was social gatherings and well there was dancing. There was one thing in common for all these occasions; when the time to dance arrived I would just crawl to warm up my chair even though it wasn’t cold. When anyone tried to lift me up, I had a well rehearsed response, ‘Go ahead, I just don’t like dancing’. Well, I was a liar and not exactly a good one. Truth be told, I didn’t dance because I was afraid, of making a fool of myself.  I was afraid I would just go out of tune, topple over and everyone would just laugh. Overtime I have learnt to overcome this fear and even though I’m not the best of the dancers, nobody is laughing, so that’s a good sign and even more important I’m enjoying myself.

            Fools, we are afraid of looking like them; and so day in day out we crawl back to our warm comfort zones. That’s easy and comfortable and most of our friends/ family support it. But it doesn’t feel right. Well, the real fools are the ones who don’t try anything and consequently don’t learn anything. Maybe the world we live in expects adults to be perfect and cognizant of everything but we all know it’s not true. After all, we were all born fools; no baby knows algebra or musical notes or the map of the earth. That’s the point of life, to learn, and though we prefer to think that it ends at school, it doesn’t. Actually school is the most comfortable place to learn in. The world on the other hand is a better educator.

            We are all striving to get comfortable with almost everything, with our paychecks, our grades, our bodies. That’s noble, but once we get there its human nature to stay there, avoiding any form of risk.  You know you are in the warmest of your comfort zone if you wake up in the morning with nothing to look forward to, except perhaps lunch. That is wrong, unfair to the universe and as doctors may put it, unhealthy. Bill Gates didn’t become filthy rich by sitting on a regular income; he took actual risks. Nor did Thomas Edison invent gadgets by playing safe. The healthy way to go is to challenge yourself with something new, make a fool of yourself, make losses and really have a life. Success is not a guarantee but what’s certain is some good education.

            Socrates was a philosopher who drew a fine line between fools and the learned. He concluded that we are all fools because we don’t know that we are fools. He drew this conclusion more than 2000 years ago but it still makes sense. I’m not sure if there are any perfect people on this world or if such people can exist but I do one thing though. There is a whole bunch of fools and I don’t mean that in a bad way. The really foolish fools are those who listen to everyone’s voice and never try anything. The learned fools on the other hand are those who risk making a fool of themselves so, if have done that you are on the right track; It’s what ‘fools’ do.