M, this is for you.
A few days ago I realized April Fool’s day is coming up soon, and I have been thinking a lot about it. Lots of things have come into my mind and heart when I realized that April Fool’s day is something deeper, a clear window into human condition. I only realized this when the concept of birthday and the concept of April Fool’s day came together in my mind, which happened thanks to my dear friend from school and my old Troop leader from Boy Scouts, who were both born on April 1st.
Wait, April Fool’s day? There are a lot of Holidays that are great for getting all windy about–Commercialized Christmas, unThankful Thanksgiving, Egg-riddled Easter, Baffling Boxing-Day, et cetera–but really Dave, April Fool’s day? Yes, April Fool’s day. And a birthday. Humor is one of things we still really have no clue about, and birth is the beginning of life.
Is this whole post just a hackneyed cliche? Ends and means, friend, ends and means.
In the past six months, my mind has been really occupied by this thing, human essence, human condition, or whatever you might want to call it. Living in Guatemala has been a wild experience so far–not at all what I expected, but more learning than I can shake a stick at it. Two things have been separately wandering around my mind–the celebration and remembrance of birthdays, which many don’t do here (the lower two thirds of the population, the poor, usually don’t know their date of birth), and why we find humor in the unknown and unexpected (like April Fool’s jokes).
Two days ago, in a twinkle of a moment these two things dovetailed and immediately made all the sense in the world and opened up this window, this lens that helped me understand this idea of humor and the celebration of birthdays.
It’s long, so click to read more–