Everybody plays the fool

Spend an hour being a fool.

This is my therapist's latest advice, her response to my list of anxieties, my worries about my death grip on stability (stability turns to stagnation), about feeling like an idiot, that I don't know what I'm doing, fears about how I waste time and the quality of my parenting. I complain about the worrying, about how neurotic I feel when my carefully constructed equilibrium gets off-balance. What I want is to feel like I am competent, in the know, but also to give the illusion of being competent. I don't want to make mistakes or look like a fool. I want to slip under the radar, do my thing, and disappear into a moonless night.

“So much judgment,” she tells me. “Eat ice cream with your fingers! Go into that classroom without knowing the teacher’s name!” Spend an hour being a fool. I think of walking around with my fly unzipped, my teeth smeared with spinach, a wooden grin on my face. I think of walking into sign posts, tripping on curbs, dropping bags of flour on floor of the Berkeley Bowl and kicking up the dust: "Hey everybody! It's snowing!"

I can't be the only one in the world worried about looking foolish, the only one with a mind that taunts me with worries. Right? Right??

In the same conversation, my therapist gives me unsolicited advice: hire a house cleaner. If we don’t have the money to pay for it, we can barter! She brushes away my house-buying worries with her relentless optimism: if the house goes into foreclosure, rent from the bank! Buy it from the bank! Be here now, loving every fucking minute of it.

I worry that her insane optimism is catching, like bedbugs. During an appointment it will lodge itself into the hem of my pants, only to creep out in the middle of the night and bite me. One morning I will wake up with a peaceful itchy feeling, will go out to trade a couple descriptive paragraphs for a cup of Caffe Trieste coffee. Sure, let’s pay our rent to the bank in dog walks and foot massages! I could get a group together down at the local Wells Fargo branch and read them my unfinished short stories in exchange for our monthly payments. I could clean someone else’s house and they could clean mine, making our bartering into a zero-sum game. But I didn’t ask for recommendations on getting a housecleaner and I don't want unrealistic house advice.

What I want is to feel complete. I’d like the anxiety to fade into the background. Some of it is just me, the relentless, obsessive brain, the tinge of worry about my failings and how I am perceived. I can temper it with technique and practice, but I will always have a nervous, stuttering core. I want to acknowledge it, to give it its due, and then let it sleep or read self-help books or take up meditation while I lead a less anxious life.

I am no optimist, but I think this is possible. I have some ideas on how to attack the problem, based in part on some of my therapist’s more useful advice. I have to go back to the origin of some of these feelings of inadequacy and acknowledge them without my rational intervening mind. I need to do things that are hard for me, with the understanding that they will get easier – a version of being a fool for an hour.

I know you are out there, my anxious brethren. Our hearts flutter, our fists clench. We want to be seen and invisible at the same time, are trying desperately to look like we know what we are doing. But chances are we do know. We must acknowledge the anxiety, then act. The more we do in the face of fear, the easier it will get. So goes the theory and I'm just optimistic enough to believe it.



Image, "fly you fool," by shoothead.

To watch Main Ingredient play "Everybody Plays the Fool," on Soul Train, click here. It's only relevant in terms of the title, but I have it going through my mind now.

Tags: Therapy, anxiety, self-blame, quieting the mind, houses, worries about feeling foolish, worrying to fill up the empty space in my brain