foolishness.

I am lucky that I am surrounded by so much love. People affirm me constantly in my life and it feels freaking good. I often wonder though why I am the way that I am and I realize what matters most—I try. I try. Only I get to hear the thoughts that are constantly fluttering about in my head and feel every emotion in the depth of my heart. The world only sees what I choose to share and I choose to love. I used to think about love as an emotion and wonder how it was possible to love the whole world—I mean what if you just really don’t like someone? Then it hit me, in fact I do not wander around falling madly in love with anything that breathes, I just choose to see the good in, the human in, the worthiness of love in everyone I meet. I definitely don’t always do it, but that’s the beauty, I constantly get new chances to make these choices and these choices have come to define me as loving, as warm, as passionate, as me.

There are times that love makes me vulnerable. There are times that love makes me annoying. There are times that love makes me do incredibly silly things, but tomorrow, I will still choose love.

Quite a few times in my life people have said to me: Don’t throw your pearls before swine. But what if I don’t believe in swine? Jewel sings, “we are given to god to put our faith therein, but to be forgiven we must first believe in sin.” I don’t, in fact, believe in the concept of sin or in the concept of swine. I believe in love and I believe in choice. I believe in humanity. I believe in light and darkness and our capabilities to choose love. I do not think anyone is inherently bad or good, we are merely born with choice.

Two or so years ago, I was reading King Lear in an English class and, like so many of Shakespeare’s plays, King Lear includes a fool. My teacher asked us to define the word “fool.” People called out answers such as idiot or a waste of intelligence, which made me feel quite silly since the fool was my favorite character. He responded to the class by saying that Jesus Christ, by some, is considered to be the biggest fool. (Now who felt silly?) He explained—according to Christian tradition—Christ died knowing his death may or may not have been in vain; he in fact died in order to give people the choice to love and to live. He died in full knowledge that people who He loved so deeply would reject him and his love.

Ya know, to be honest, I don’t know if I really buy this, but looking at Jesus as a literary figure and in comparing him to Shakespeare’s fool, what a freaking great way to live! What if we all lived our lives in utter love regardless of the outcome? When I really ask myself who I want to be, how I want to spend my time, how I want to use my strength, my time, my energy, I would gladly be a fool. If choosing love in full knowledge of my own vulnerability, annoyingness, and silliness makes me a fool, so be it. If my choice to love each and every individual I come across touches only one person, I would happily be a fool for that one. And wouldn’t it be worth it?