Short Story From Pen Of Thurles Author Tom Ryan:
Fool’s Day has arrived and it’s nice to know that the world still celebrates folly, throws wisdom to the wind and embarks on a riotous orgy of devilment and idiocy.
Mind you, we have been making fools of ourselves all year round, but April 1st is open season for all sorts of lunatics and twits. We can all make absolute asses out of ourselves without any fear of reprisal on that day and get away with it ,as convention puts the stamp of respectability and indeed reverence on the Day of Fools.
The whole concept is a very healthy one; indeed if I had my way every day should be officially Fools Day. The people whose company I enjoy best in this valley of error and terror are the stupid ones who in reality are really the wise ones, for they are aware of their shortcomings, but absolutely revel in their folly.
They chuckle at themselves at least ten times a day in the mirror as they flounder from one unholy and unfortunate occurrence to another.
And happy the man who, when told that his cattle have strayed ten miles up the road, replied that he deliberately left the gates open to provide an excuse to go for a ten miles jog!
We are all fools but humanity will never accept that incontrovertible fact and thus is the sad, sorry and shameful condition of mankind.
The Shakespearian character who cried : “Let me play the fool”, was no fool at all. He knew himself and far from conning himself in the matter, was quite content in being a confounded eejit.
If only we could see ourselves as others see us – poor blundering awkward amadans, then surely life would be that much more tolerable and far less tormenting.
But pride, vanity, status-seeking and silliness of convention, even in our educational system, lauds the wise and brainy and extolls the merits of these folks. There is only scorn and derision for the fool. What a ridiculous sense of values we have to be sure.
Folly is always jolly and I’m sure some of our leading comedians would agree.
Power rarely belongs to the wise who only write about it. No, it is the eejits who waste their lives in hassling and hustling in a blind ambitious frenzy that is the hallmark of the fools who are the plutocrats of earth, whatever about heaven.
I see little advantage in being a knowledgeable individual. If you are the essence of wisdom ,you will probably write a book about your climb to success and sure as water runs and grass will grow some wise scoundrel will write another book to call you a liar and a fool.! And they would probably be absolutely correct.
True also that the fool is always an attractive character. The self-styled wise, fearing no assault from a fool leave the poor eejit to enjoy the world at his leisure; he poses no threat to them. The cute man will ponder long and deep over the seemingly insurmountable problems.
The fool will not even bother to consider them, and will go upon his stupid way, joyful and unperturbed.
In recent years the countryman has been the most successful fool of all. For under the guise of folly, he elicited the paternal and maternal solicitude of us all .
Arra ‘tis ludicrous. Here we all are pretending to be little fools around All Fools Day, when really, we are “amadáns” all year round.
Go on, tell some ‘gom’ his shoe lace is loose, when it is not and laugh like a hyena at the result.
But you are fooling nobody. You just know that you, me, and all of us, are unvarnished idiots and are destined to be such. Go on, avoid the reality and tell yourself how wise and prudent you are and so avoid coming face to face with yourself.
As the world celebrates the International Feast of the Fool today, why not repent? Repent of your wisdom and rejoice in your folly. You’d be a fool if you didn’t.
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