Fool Me Once

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." - Folk Wisdom

From the pages of The Nun's Priest's Tale, part of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, can hold lessons for us in modern day life. It is a story of a group embarked upon a pilgrimage and amuse themselves by sharing stories. These stories provide each other with lessons learned by each of them.

Shared knowledge in the form of storytelling, an age old human connection.

The story told is one of a vain rooster named Chanticleer and a sly fox that is similar to fables told by Aesop in the sixth century. Chanticleer is known by the many hens to be intelligent, charismatic, and manly. One day he is sitting and has a horrifying dream of a beast killing him.

A while later he finds a fox stalking him and through sly flattery, the fox tricks Chanticleer into trusting him. It was then in a flash of vulnerability, Chanticleer is carried off by the fox, swallowed whole.

Danger strikes when our vanity closes our eyes.

The fox is chased around by the humans and from within Chanticleer convinces the fox to taunt them. When the fox opens his mouth, Chanticleer escapes. In dismay, the fox attempts to sway him back closer.

He says, “Oh Chanticleer, I am so sorry! I must have scared you when I grabbed you and brought you out of the yard. But sir, I wasn’t going to hurt you. Come on down and let me explain. I promise I’ll tell you the truth, so help me God.”

Fanciful promises and deception meant to sway us again.

“No way,” Chanticleer replied. “Fool me once, shame on you—but fool me twice, shame on me! You’re not going to trick me again and get me to close my eyes and sing with your flattery."

Yes, we can each fall to our human weakness of arrogance and susceptibility to flattery. We fall prey to distractions, taking our eyes off the task at hand. The applause of a job well done and the ensuing swagger provides just enough time for hard lessons to occur.

After our experience with the fox, we can learn and not be twice fooled. There is no shame in learning the lesson for life is a collection of earned experiences. Use those experiences to live a life filled with fewer sly foxes.

Stay inspired my friends.

Fooling Yourself

Norman Rockwell - Saturday Evening Post

“I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.” ― Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia

So how did it start, the tradition of fooling or performing pranks upon others?

One popular belief says that back in the 1500s, France changed its calendar so the new year would start in January. This was done to align to the Roman calendar instead of spring. But word of this change took quite a bit of time to find its way into the rural areas. Country dwellers continued to celebrate the New Year in April so they became known as "April fools," or so the story goes.

There are many serious and of course, non-serious attempts to explain the origins of this hilarious holiday.

One of the more amusing April Fool pranks was the 2008 BBC news story indicating that camera crews had captured video of Adélie penguins flying. There was even a video clip of these magnificent creatures migrating to the rainforests of South America where they "spend the winter basking in the tropical sun."

One thing all of us tend to do as well, not only during this day but many days of the year, is to fool ourselves. And what I mean by that is fooling ourselves into believing we are incapable of accomplishing great things. From an early age, others teach us about our limits.

Truth is, we are our own limit.

Enjoy this day, April 1st as a day of pranks. Tomorrow, drop the self defeat and be convinced that you can do more in your life. Your imagination, your dreams, your goals can send you to greater heights. Stop fooling yourself and start believing.

Stay inspired my friends.

No More All Fools Day

Foolish Questions #36

"There comes a morning in life when you wake up a new person; that is to say, you wake up the same person but you realize it's your own fault." ~Robert Brault

Here it is the first of April, well known as April Fools Day. Did it come from a copying error of the manuscript for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in 1392? Did it come from the tale of Londoners being tricked into going to the Tower of London to see the Lions washed in 1698? Or maybe all of us have been fooled over and over these many years into believing it had something to do with anything at all.

Interestingly enough, we do have that ability which allows us to fool ourselves into believing what isn't true. In other words, we can get good at pushing the truth into darkness and living what isn't true. This type of self-deception can be partly explained by what psychologists call "confirmation bias" and also referred to as Morton's Demon.

Morton's Demon was a thought experiment created by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. A hypothetical demon sits at the gate of our mind and if and when he sees supportive evidence coming in, he opens the gate. But if he sees contradictory information coming, he closes the gate. In this way, the demon allows us to believe we are right and avoid any of the contradictory information.

Dr. Stephen Diamond writes, "Consider the ordinary example of some heated conflict with a spouse, lover, relative or close friend. How is it that after the fact, each participant can have a completely contradictory version of what happened? Objectively speaking, first A happened, then B occurred, then C was said, D followed, etc. But what if the objective facts or our own behavior don't comport well with how we see ourselves? We distort the facts to support our particular point of view and to sustain our beliefs about the kind of person we are or want to be."

But enough with the medical terminology and explanations. We simply have the ability to fool ourselves. We fool ourselves so much we forget whom we really are at its worst.

Look in the mirror again today and rediscover who you really are. Find the real you inside. Robert Brault also said, "Looking back, you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life, and that person was you. It is not too late to become that person again."

Do not let that person slip by without getting to know him/her. Know yourself and let the greatness of you come to the surface.