A good teacher once said, that between choosing to express myself versus keeping quiet merely out of the fear that I might say something ‘wrong’; I should always favour letting it flow. The sheer weight of living with a regret for the rest of my life she’d said, would just not be worth it.
Anyways, thanks to that lesson; I’ve made a fool of myself so many times now that the fear thereof does not inhibit me much these days. I’ve had my fair share of failures, rejections, disappointments and despair. And I’ve had my uber moments as well! It took me some time though to realise that she had intended it not as a licence to be impulsive and indiscreet but rather as a mature expression of a considered conviction. So if that means I might find myself in a muddy morass more often than not, as long as I’m aware of what I’m getting into, well, so be it!
The key, evidently, is to somehow survive them all. By clinging on, at times, to nothing more than a faint foggy vision of a scraggy peak beyond the valleys we find ourselves in. Trust me, it’s much less fun living in the plains anyway! In the end, they say, that what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.
As contrary as it may seem, making a fool of ourselves a few times over, might actually be the best secret recipe for becoming foolproof. Each time, life teaches us to be a bit wiser and helps us smile a bit wider at our sheer vanity.
