The Fool is numbered 0 in most decks, but in truth, he has no number. She floats through the Major Arcana (the 'trumps' of the playing card game, where the archetypal story of life is told), which is often times referred to as "The Fool's Journey.”
In the tarot, The Fool is a character that exists out of time, They are representative of both the beginning and the end of the journey. A nonbinary, liminal wanderer. Plus they have an animal companion! Usually a dog, to represent the fact that they are not journeying alone. In their floating, the Fool represents our ability to return to a state of pure possibility. No matter where we find ourselves in our lives, no matter how grief-stricken, or sick, or successful we feel, we can always become the Fool once more. - Mandie McGlynn (with some slight edits)
“The end of history illusion”
There is an idea that we have a stable personality in some ways throughout our lives, that something of who we were as children still persists until we die. There’s really very little evidence for this though. Research into personality shows us over and over again that we respond to our environment, and if we change our environment we change our behavior.
Psychologist Dan Gilbert discusses a phenomenon he calls “the end of history illusion”
“Every one of you knows that the rate of change slows over the human lifespan, that your children seem to change by the minute but your parents seem to change by the year. But what is the name of this magical point in life where change suddenly goes from a gallop to a crawl? Is it teenage years? Is it middle age? Is it old age? The answer, it turns out, for most people, is now, wherever now happens to be. What I want to convince you today is that all of us are walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives….
Why does this happen? We're not entirely sure, but it probably has to do with the ease of remembering versus the difficulty of imagining. Most of us can remember who we were 10 years ago, but we find it hard to imagine who we're going to be, and then we mistakenly think that because it's hard to imagine, it's not likely to happen.”
We are not predictable, not really. We can change and make different decisions at any moment. We constantly underestimate how much we have changed and how much we will change in the future. We create a narrative that allows us to maintain an illusion of consistency, when in fact, there may be only a tiny overlap between ourselves now and who we will become in 10 years.
Just five years ago, I started writing poetry, almost out of nowhere. I wrote poetry as a child and teenager but then not again until I was nearly 40. And I was terrible at it! Looking back at what I wrote a few years ago, is a lot like looking at what I wrote when I was 19. But it was also incredibly fun, and deeply meaningful to me. I allowed myself to return to a state of the Fool, I let myself begin something completely new, and I was reminded how it feels to create just to express myself. I had no idea it would turn into the career shift that it has, that was not my intent, I just wanted to play again. And the incredible amount of growth that can happen in just a few years is genuinely hard to comprehend. If you had told me 5 years ago, I would have two published collections, I don’t think I would’ve believed you. I truly do believe it’s never too late to return to the beginner’s mind.
Once we begin to think of ourselves as an expert, or merely experienced, we start to approach our lives and projects with a different mindset than that of a beginner. We stop experimenting and applying our creative mind to the blank canvas sitting in front of us, and become committed to our habits and routines. We believe we know what works and what does not work and so we simply follow the path we’ve previously paved, afraid to walk a new one.
What’s more, we can let ourselves believe that we are too old to learn new things, that just recently we became who we are going to be for the rest of our lives.
Beginner’s mind is a way we can really “see” our own culture again? How do we welcome people in? Check our expectations? Who do we assume is in the room? Who do we assume is not? How do we educate and learn about writing or any field?
And what does it mean to embody the spirit of possibility and foolish naïveté to our own lives this next year?
Where are some places in your life where it would be good to open yourself to the many options instead of the “best possible one?”
Perhaps it means going on a walk around your own neighborhood and simply noticing beauty,
you could take a camera or a notebook with you and jot down what you see as an anthropologist would.
Take up a new hobby or craft just for fun. Don’t monetize it, just revel in being bad at it.
Try tarot or runes,
add in seasonal rituals to your year,
or create your own family liturgical calendar with your special dates on it.
My own personal plan is to go to explore new neighborhoods without my phone, to get lost or print out maps like it’s 2005. I’m going to take more photographs with film and have to wait to see what they look like. I’m going to invite people over for dinner and play board games and roast marshmallows around a fire.
I’m aiming for a more analog year. A more deliberate year. A foolish year.
The fool encourages us to playfully move into the year without urgency or intent, a timeless, liminal creature, a spiritual infant in awe of the light crossing the room, an elder coming back to their childhood home and walking the halls, realizing how much they’ve changed. How much everything has changed. These are the moments when you can almost look at your life as a benevolent alien would, look at all these humans doing their human things, you think. How delightful! How bizarre!
The fool invites us to stand outside of the time stream of our lives and simply observe them with new eyes, as a spirit of joyful possibility.
What are some possibilities you’d like to embrace this year? I’d love to hear your ideas!
Dying for analog here
this is So beautiful. Thank you for sharing your words & wisdom Alix.
Fool energy is calling to me now too-dancing, & whispering, visiting me on my walks & in my dreams (where i ride talking horses! Ha!)
So serendipitous that just this am, i drew the Owl from my “Sacred Rebels” deck (Alana Fairchild) “be the hunter, not the hunted.” I won’t go into the whole description here, (i am in process of including a smidge of it in a forthcoming post of my own), but it spoke of *letting go of old patterns, empowerment, freedom, self-love, & truth; not to be drawn in to the dramas & repetitive cycles of suffering spurred by others.*
Whew! I don’t know why i continue to be surprised by the precision & timeliness of such messages.
When I tune in-to nature, to the 5D; when I slow down; when I am “with & in” the world, instead of trying to manipulate it to my will, I am filled with a sense of magic & awe.
It seems an act of cultural disobedience to go slowly, to savor, play, make a mess, wander, get lost. And these days, it is all I want to do. Write words & be led around by the Fool.