Silliness Counts
Weekly Reading Topic for May 16, 2020:
Well, good morning, love! I just opened a Reading for you, my newsletter subscribers and here’s what I heard in answer to the following:
What do my readers most need to hear this weekend? What is the most important message to send to my beloved readers?
The answer was: “silliness counts.”
What follows is your weekly reading, dearest, silliest one.
Weekly Reading │ Silliness Counts
Q: What do we need to know about “silliness counts?”
A: “Don’t be silly.”
“It’s too silly to take seriously.”
“I know, it’s silly, but here’s what I was thinking…”
“You looked so silly!”
“I feel like a fool.”
“I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I know it’s time for me to get serious, but I just don’t know what to do.”
This weekend, it’s time to shelve your fear of foolishness and embrace the Silly.
It’s time to:
Be silly.
Take silliness seriously.
Think silly thoughts.
Look silly.
Feel silly.
To know what you’re doing: Being Silly.
To get serious about Not Knowing.
We think foolishness is the same as naive. We think foolishness is the same as inexperienced. We think it means weakness, trouble on the horizon.
We look over the edge of the chasm and stare into the void and think “only a fool would step forward.”
Well, everything that was ever created started as a silly idea in a fool’s mind.
Every road you’ve ever traveled started out as a footpath pounded out by people who didn’t know exactly where they were going.
Every person who was the first to say “I love you,” didn’t know for sure the feeling was mutual.
All risks are taken by fools.
Now, there are such things as foolish risks.
But silliness will steer you clear of those.
When you’re silly, your IQ goes up. Your fear pops like a soap bubble caught on a pine needle. It’s there, it’s big, it’s luminous, and then it’s suddenly gone, with only a feeling of “oh, wow!” left.
Embrace the silly this weekend. Everything ludicrous is there to loosen you up, shake your muscles free from their fear cages. Everything ridiculous is there to make you shake your head in amazement.
Have you ever had a day so bad that you just couldn’t believe it? Those are days that only God could make.
And God makes every day for us. Good or bad, they are there for our benefit. And finding something silly to notice, something to lift up our countenance and flush our cheeks and shake our belly with laughter gets us back where we belong, right in the JOY that God uses to create.
I know, that was a loaded sentence for some of you. Substitute any word for God that you like. As long as it’s the Something Beyond Our Understanding that you feel when you see a sunset, or feel a newborn baby’s terrific grasp, or smell coffee first thing in the morning.
As long as it’s something that makes you center in your body, alerts your mind to the possibility of pleasure, and opens your heart, that’s what we mean when we say “God.”
God’s the biggest fool of all, for creating such a weird, wondrous, wackadoodle world. I mean, come on: who but God could orchestrate this miracle, this thing that keeps us all inside, all day long, for a month (and longer for some of us) forced to deal with our own stuff, and our own families, and the many chains we have on our lives?
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Only a fool sees the possibilities when life is upside down. Only a fool sees the obvious solution the rest of us are missing because we are fearing the future, or mourning the past.
Only a fool, only the silly, is truly rooted right here. Right now.
Why did that ridiculous clown of a comic (what was his name?) smash watermelons on stage, splattering the audience with pink sticky flesh?
Because it was silly, and it always worked. It got people to react, and laugh, and they all had the same thought: why did I think this would be fun? And they all had to come up with their own answers.
And now here we are, looking at our lives and thinking “how did I get here?” “Is this the choice I would have made if I’d been brave?”
“Is this what I really want?”
“If I don’t have this job, what do I do?”
“If I can’t do the things I am used to doing, what’s there for me?”
And so we are forced to be creative, to recreate our lives. To be the God we thought would have orchestrated this thing for us, already.
But God’s really busy right now, smashing watermelons and watching the reaction.
And so if you are looking for divine personal instruction, I think you’ve already got it: pick up your version of a sledgehammer, and find something satisfying to do with it.
There’s something in your life that needs smashing, and when you do it, you will see that it’s not silly. It’s liberating. And oh, you didn’t want it anyway. It’s kind of freeing to just have it opened up on the floor in front of you.
It’s silly. And that’s a good thing.
Find the silly things that don’t work for you, that don’t need to be there.
He smashes watermelons because watermelons don’t belong on stage. So he sends them out into the world, where they can do some good. People pick the melon out of their hair, munch on it. It is good, it is sweet, it is food.
There’s something in your life that you’ve been afraid of being, doing, seeing, feeling, thinking. Embrace the silly, be silly, find silly, make silly.
That’s where your freedom lies.
This is going to look so different for each of you. But in order for it to be the “real thing” you have to feel your way to the silly.
The silly thing will be lying right in front of you, like a watermelon on a stage. It will be familiar, but when you really look at it, you will think “now wait a minute, why is that there?”
Or “why is she/he there?”
Or “why do I spend my money on THAT?”
Or “why do I eat this, or drink this?”
Or “why do I do that?”
When you find your silly, your watermelon, be foolish. Push it to the edge of the stage, stare into the bright lights, and trust that the Beyond will take care of it for you. Then hit it. Open it up. Reveal the seeds. Make it rain.
It’s like stepping off into the chasm, right? OK, right. But here’s the dirty secret that every self help book tries to tell you, but that you can only really understand if you’ve done it yourself:
Ready?
The secret is this.
Only fools step off into the void.
And only fools find out that the void isn’t a void at all.
It’s a soft bed of grass that rises up to meet your first step into nothingness.
There is nothing in your life that has to be tolerated and miserabled through.
If there is something that feels miserable to deal with, either it’s a watermelon waiting for the sledgehammer’s release, or it’s a Dear Love waiting for you to find the joy in your relationship.
Embracing the silly, either way, will reveal the truth.
Either it’s a watermelon, or it’s the Dear Love. Then you will know, and can act accordingly.
So this weekend keep your muscles loose, your belly soft, your heart open, and your mind alert. You’re on the look out for the absurd, the hilarious, ironic, the funny-if-you-think about it.
These are the soft spots in your life that you are being asked to shore up, or harden, or reinforce. Now. This season.
Because later this year, next season, in the fall, the silly watermelons you still have lying around will have rotted, or worse, gone to seed. They’ll be crawling with ants and attracting roaches.
You don’t want those watermelons come this fall. Smash them now, so we can all have a piece of ripe, juicy, sweet fruit.
And the things that are silly and drive you crazy but are dear to you? Love them up. Nurture them. Tend to them like seeds, because later this year those seeds will be sprouting your new life. And it will look like a new world because of them. They will be harvested for decades to come. They will feed you and your loved ones.
So, silliness is not to be discounted. Silliness counts.
Silliness is the most serious work we have.
To belly laughs and heart-opening magical moments of connection!
Happy smashing, happy seedlings!
Molly
PS: Looked him up. It’s Gallagher.
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