Field Note 1: The Fool

4 min read

Oh no, I have only fifteen minutes before I have to be back to the garden to pick raspberries. I really don't want to be late. Sister Rose-Mary is waiting, and I know how much these raspberries mean to her. Every time she sees me arrive in the kitchen with boxes full of the dark purple ones, her eyes light up, and since the day I met her, all my inner child has wanted is to make her smile.

So here I am, as a thirty year old, sitting behind a desk in a monastery on an island in Norway, trying to write before I have to put on my jacket to go outside again. A few days ago, I didn't even know this place existed. I arrived on a rainy Tuesday evening, when an old man dipped his hand into a blue ceramic bowl, splashed water over his face and said a bit grumpy, "You're too late. It's finished." The next evening, I was sitting next to him at dinner. He told stories about his years in Ireland while I watched him from the corner of my eye, wondering if he used to be a sailor.

But he wasn't. He's a priest, living in this Marian monastery where I'm picking raspberries now. What I didn't know when I arrived was that five minutes earlier, they had been panicking because one of their volunteers hadn't shown up, and they had no idea what they were going to do with all the raspberries that needed to be picked. Their volunteer schedule was already fully booked until February, and apparently this kind of thing never happens. They called it a miracle that I just happened to be standing at their door on the right time.

So yesterday, while I was moving the curling leaves around to find the good ones, I took a raspberry so dark and soft, that I almost squeezed it between my fingers. I wanted to eat it, but for some reason I hesitated. Can I do this? Seriously. Perhaps you know these tiny moments too. Something completely ordinary happens and you catch yourself doing something you've probably been doing for years, suddenly wondering if it’s appropriate or not. Where something as innocent as eating a raspberry suddenly reveals an entire part of you. As if taking something good for yourself before it has been shared with everyone else is somehow selfish, and even unacceptable.

I ate one anyway.

Somewhere between the sweetness in my mouth and seeing the red stains on my fingers, I heard myself saying, Oh my God, I'm such a fool. I laughed. I've always had something with the Fool. Or perhaps he has something with me. I remember being in high school and staying overnight at a classmate's house with our whole class before a sports day. The next morning, everyone left together, except me. I'd gone to bed too late, woke up too late, ignored everyone who screamed at me to hurry up, and by the time I got outside, the bus was gone. I was standing alone in the rain with no idea how I was going to get to school on time. Until I saw a man coming on a motorbike. So I jumped into the middle of the street with my arms wide open. He stopped, and a little hesitantly, I heard myself asking if he could give me a lift to school.

He was so kind to say yes, and he dropped me off as far as the main road. A few seconds later, I saw a car with someone I knew from school inside, so there went my arms again. Her father stopped, I jumped in, and they took me the rest of the way to school. By the time the bus with my classmates arrived, I was already standing in the parking lot, talking with the teachers. I still remember their faces. They had all left together and assumed I wouldn't make it to the sports day.

But somehow, I arrived before them.

That's the Fool I recognize. And I have to admit, even now, he's still very present in me. Time is a strange concept to him. He always thinks there's more than enough of it, until there isn't. He arrives late and somehow gets there first. He misses the obvious path and notices another one. He talks to strangers, animals and children, and occasionally apologizes to trees when he bumps into them. He lives partly in his imagination and is impossible to predict. He's sensitive, curious, full of joy and one big walking contradiction. Sometimes he looks stupid. Sometimes he probably is. And very often, he sees things we don't. He doesn't fit well into any box either. Perhaps that's why he longs to find a home in the strangest places, yet still wonders where he belongs.

I believe this is why the Fool can be so repellent. We don't like what we can't understand or explain. We assume he's lost because we can't see the map he's following. He can look irresponsible, maybe even crazy, to someone who has built their life around certainty, or childish to someone who had to grow up early, and probably very naive to someone who learned that trusting people is dangerous. Maybe there is something confronting about that. Maybe we recognize ourselves. That innocent part that once talked to animals too, interacted with different kinds of worlds, and trusted people before learning all the reasons why not to.

But if I turn the tables, I notice I can feel repelled by certain people too. The ones who seem too polished, too controlled, dressed in suits, saying the right things, showing almost nothing on their faces. Smiling with this strange radiance behind their eyes that doesn't feel like love or happiness at all. Sometimes they look like robots to me, and I have a hard time trusting them. Maybe it's because I can't see their map either. Funny how easy it is to think someone is lost when you have no idea where they're going.

I don't want to romanticize the Fool either or turn him into some kind of hero. He gets things wrong. He makes mistakes, falls flat on his face, often, gets hurt, can feel terribly lonely and disconnected from society, and sometimes ends up in the wrong places. But then I wonder if a wrong road really exists. Doesn't every road we take reveal another depth of life?

What scares me more than getting lost, making the wrong choices, losing people or having to start all over again, is becoming so afraid of getting hurt that I close my heart completely. That I grow bitter, suspicious, locked inside myself, and reach the end of my life realizing I only lived as half a human, with a bilion unexplored roads and what if’s, dying with me. Yes, brrrr, that would definitely be my worst nightmare.

Oh no, I see the time. My fifteen minutes are long gone. And as usual… I'll arrive a little late. Ooops. But this was worth it, because somehow, after years of overthinking whether I should start writing a blog or not, I suddenly wrote my first one.

Thank you, flow. Thank you, Trondheim. Thank you Raspberries.

And thank you to my foolish side, of which I still don't know whether it's a superpower or a flaw.

Before I walk back, I can’t stop wondering what your inner Fool is like.

Is he still alive, or just somewhere locked inside?

Wherever he is, I think he might surprise you.