Travelers Must Be Content

Taking advice from the trickster

Swarming in my mind these days are the themes of paradox and contradiction, of trickster archetypes… Then, I remember the Shakespearean fool - the embodiment of paradox itself.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

-Touchstone, As You Like It

Often in a Shakespearean play, the fool is the one who the characters underestimate or overlook and yet, his position as outsider affords him access to the Truth. Lines spoken by the fool sometimes eclipse in both wisdom and oddity those of the main characters. For those with keenest eyes, he may be a character of least formal education, least inheritance, least opportunity - but he is inarguably the most liberated. A walking paradox, but free of scrutiny, reputation, and ego - he has nothing to lose. This begs the question I carry in my heart a lot these days: what is the fool here to teach us?

Photo by Rachel on Unsplash

We’ll get to that, but first: more on paradox.

I notice paradox in me and often cringe at it. Fold it and tuck it away. I am a soft, nurturing Mother - and yet I RAGE. I like prudence - but I like indulgence and adventure, too. I have a deep appreciation for my personal and direct experience with God and yet… I have questions and doubts, too. I desire to fly eternally, become gold dust glittering in the wind AND I long to feel the cool, loose humus of the Earth under the canopy of enormous oaks that I know, feed, and love.

My natal Moon resides in a stellium between my Saturn and Uranus placements. Clustered closely together, I am becoming increasingly aware of the way these contrasting energies seem in a tight struggle inside me. Saturn - a planet of tradition and discipline. Uranus - a planet of innovation and revolution. With the steady hand of my Guardian Saturn and the unpredictable whims of my wild Playmate Uranus - they are playing tug-of-war with my heart!

This recent deep dive into my astrology reveals what I already knew about myself, but don’t often like to admit: I am trickster. I am plagued by a constant disdain for and simultaneous yearning to reconcile contradictions in and around me. It’s exhausting!

Photo by Jack Finnigan on Unsplash

The Trickster Within

In mid-life, I am beginning to encounter deeper complexities in marriage and motherhood and in community (in myself?) than ever before. In addition to that, I long to stay in the “comfort” of home, as I have stayed at home with my little boy for almost seven years now. I say “comfort” because I didn’t know how comfortable I would be at home. I didn’t always see myself as a stay at home Mom. I wanted Motherhood, but the way it landed was a bit of a brutal awakening - perhaps the best kind that life has delivered to me thus far.

Don’t get me wrong… These years have been so tender and sweet - formed by morning snuggles and neighborhood walks after breakfast and warm tea and naptimes. Days with my boy were slow and swirling and so very precious to me.

But now… something beckons and I know not what… It’s something of an echo of long ago when career was my sole devotion. When I was strategic and competitive and intent on taking positions of leadership. I have spent these precious years orienting to a new, intuitive and heart-centered way of being - this, of course, a non-negotiable as I grow forward. I sense inside me a threshold toward what may be the most mythical reconciliation of my life thus far; it is a melding of this willful strategic self and the lover/nurturer inside that I have come to adore. All I want to do is stay here in service to the warm and cozy hearth - I want to keep this comfortable place, but everyone to whom I am devoted is changing. This beckoning I sense within is a call for me to change, to open toward expansion.

Subject to Saturn’s guidance and Uranus’ wild nature, I may delight in my own comforts and against my better judgment at times. These comforts can be illusory, though, akin to the indulgent and often petty nobility of Shakespearean tragedy. The trickster within longs to shake up the status quo. Shakespeare’s Fool is the one we want to shy away from, push aside, to defend our comfortable sense of normalcy. But he is also the liberated one who holds the boldest of truths.

Enter the Forest with Me

Photo by Jordan Heinrichs on Unsplash

Returning again to the question on my heart: what is trickster here to teach us?

At the risk of this sounding too much like an English Literature lecture, I present another Shakespeare quote:

Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I;

when I was at home I was in a better place;

but travelers must be content".

- Touchstone, As You Like It

Here, Touchstone, the court jester in Shakespeare’s As You Like It flees from tyranny and into the forest (“Arden”) with the play’s heroines. A court jester in the forest is indeed an absurd twist in the play. But the final sentiment of our unflappable fool holds the key: but travelers must be content.

Travelers are we who seek and create. Sustainable creative expression requests that we befriend the trickster within. It requires this kind of bold unflappability to realize and reflect back TRUTH. I see the dignified nobility inside me who could choose the comfortable path, but I recognize the dynamics at play around me: my son is older and naptimes are over; my creative work is begging to be seen, my craft to be honed; my personhood needs dynamism and regeneration. In other words, perhaps it is time the Fool takes center stage.

From Monica Syvestre