I’m a Fool (But Who Cares)

Humour and wit are tools I use often, sarcasm and ridicule are how I underline a point.  This isn’t one of those posts.  I’m here to admit that I am a bit of a fool but that’s ok – in many ways I hope you are and I hope my children turn out to be fools too.

What I Mean is…

As a child I had an overactive imagination.

The man you read about now was a dreamer in his younger days.  A boy who would read, write and draw his way through life. A believer of monsters, of anything really. I was gullible but I was genuine and in the saddest of times my mind was the place I would escape.

I’ve changed in many ways.

I’m more cynical sure, I don’t openly accept all information as fact but I also believe in many things that defy reason.

That’s foolish… but I don’t care.

I Knew Tragedy at a Young Age

Younger than most.

I saw someone I idolised (by no means a perfect man but the best dad I could ask for) stripped from me, not in death but in an accident that for the longest time broke his spirit.

There’s much more I’ve seen too; the struggles of single parents, the impact of abusive relationships, what poverty is and how it affects your relationship to money and discrimination in its many, varied forms.

Funny thing is that I used to believe these were what made me the way I am.  Later I came to believe that the counterpoints to them; meaning the strong women in my life like my mum and nan – who’ve always supported my creativity (if not worried about my naivety) were the catalysts.

Neither are true.

The wonderful people in my life nurtured my creative side but it’s my moral compass they get credit for.  The same is true of the hardships we’ve all shared.

The Truth

The events of my life have affected much of how I perceive things but as I look at my dad and my son:

I know that some people are just wired to believe.

Some use that gift to be creative (myself and to some degree the boy-child) and some use it as a means of escape (both my dad and I).

Aaron, the boy, was one who would draw the monsters in his head. Who would write or tell stories to make the world better or put evils into a more relatable form.  I was the boy who was too scared to watch ET and I was the boy who once built a time machine to stop my dad from having his accident.

I was the boy who imagined it was OK to cry because people would understand that I needed to.  On this front, I was often wrong.  That’s the world I imagine, the world I am working towards, not the one I live in.

Today, I’m the man who believes that people are worth more than corporate greed, who believes that people can change; no matter what they’ve done, that gender is not about colours or what emotions you can or cannot show and that the world can be fixed one word at I time.

I’m A Fool

I must be, because the evidence is stacked against me.

I was the boy who believed everything. My son is now that boy.  My daughter, she’s too young to tell but she has imagination for sure and the willpower and stubbornness to bring those dreams to life.

Perhaps like me, there’s a bit of the fool in them too. A willingness to believe and embrace the chaos of the world with an open mind.

I’ll tell them that It’s okay to be a fool.  Better a fool who sees hope and believes in change and that I’m happy with who I am and if they live this life, embrace it, they’ll find in time, that they are no longer the fools, it’s the non-dreamers who are.