Be a Clown
Success usually lies on the other side of looking stupid.
I’m sure if you’ve been on any corner of the innanets, you’ve seen some version of this meme, with an accompanying caption indicating whatever was said or done by the author made them look stupid in some way.
And while the idea behind this meme has generated many a laugh, in keeping with my tradition of murdering sacred cows, I thought I’d flip the script and make an argument for embracing your inner clown on the road to accomplishment.
In medieval times, clowns, jokers and jesters were considered an important part of the court, because they tapped into something most everyone was afraid to do back in the days: poke fun at the rules. The idea behind it being that court and high society with all its intrigue and rules often got on the stuffy side (as any good watch of Game of Thrones will show). Kings, Queens and people who’ve been gifted with the idea of power, tend to take themselves way too seriously; the jester (or clown) serves to counteract all that and remind people that, yea you may be wearing that funny looking hat, but you eat, shit and bleed just like the rest of us.
And much like the kings and queens of yore, people who are on a mission to succeed often make the same exact mistake. We seek perfection, careful to hone every drop of our craft and public persona to make sure that the people see us as nothing more than those who inherited the divine right of spotlight — which couldn’t be the furthest thing from the truth.
On the road to success, there are many pitfalls and ass whoopings waiting for you to roll through with all your bravado and tough talk Chief. I wish I could tell you there was a way around it, but there’s not. And you trying to make sure everything is absolutely perfect before you start on that road, ain’t doing nothing for yourself but delaying the inevitable.
I had to come to terms with this in the process of writing my manuscript as I draw nearer to my self-imposed deadline. I noticed the parts of the book I feared writing where the ones where I was most unsure of myself and where to head next (to be fair, I recently embraced the #pantserlifewithplottertendencies so plot holes give me severe agita). And I’d often find myself putting off writing sessions just because I didn’t want to face that section of my writing and the great probability of it being tremendously stupid and trash in nature. I was afraid to look like a clown.
But a funny thing happened this week: I performed a poetry exercise I got from the battle rap arena where I had people give me random topics and I’d generate some spiffy words for them to get my creative juices flowing. I was scared to do it because the whole time I’m thinking “What if I can’t do it?” or “What if I forget how to rhyme?” or “What if people finally recognize me for the fraud I really am and the jig is up?”. But despite my pre-stage jitters, I gave myself permission to step out of the way and let my brain do all the work; and people that I wrote for loved it. I ate up the praise but the whole time I was thinking “Really? You like this?”.
It reminded me of a quote from my problematic former savior Kanye West (‘Ye, if you’re reading this get help bro for real; even Jay went to therapy — or at least do ‘shrooms/LSD/MDMA with a proper shaman man, shit): “when you try hard, that’s when you die hard”; or as my favorite little green person said, “Do or not do. There is no try.” Whenever we hit a snag in our plans for success usually it’s because one of two things happened: a) we were trying too hard or b) we overestimated our skillset and ended up trying too hard.
The only remedy to this is to embrace the way of the clown; learn how to poke fun at your lack of skills (not yourself, there is a difference between introspective laughter and self-deprecation), seek out a Rafiki, Mufasa and your tribe and then let them help you out of the pit of despair and back onto that road of ass whoopings waiting for you.
I promise you the more you embrace being willing to look foolish as you learn how to do things, the better your life will be in the long run. If not, at least you’ll get some cool stories out of it. I know I have.
Now if you excuse me, I gotta go apply my clown makeup and finish this damn book.
