Happy New Year and welcome to the Crazy Insights newsletter, where everything we share is inspired by our readings, learning, and experiences. If you've just joined us, we're thrilled to have you on board đ.
âIntelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.â
- Socrates (470 BC - 399 BC)
Itâs 2024! Letâs go crazy đ¤Şđ
THE CATâS LAIR â ď¸
Six Things About Fools & Foolish Behaviour
One: Despite the word "fool" getting thrown around a lot, only a few know what it means. The Oxford Dictionary defines a fool as "someone who acts unwisely or imprudently". This definition, however, does not fully capture the essence of the fool. Since we humans think before we act, our thoughts drive our actions. Fools nourish unwise thoughts and then act them out. Therefore, a fool can be thought of as an individual who thinks and acts unwisely.
Two: This expanded definition is important because it is possible to hold a lot of foolish beliefs without ever acting on any one of them. The fact that we do not act on our foolish beliefs does not make us less foolish. It could just be that the opportune moment to unleash our foolishness has not yet presented itself. If this is the case, then the fool who is a fool in thought only, still has a chance to look inward to correct his behaviour.
Three: Before a fool acts out, he is a fool to himself alone. The moment he acts out, his foolishness is exposed to all those around him. It would seem that those who act out more frequently through their words or actions have a greater chance of engaging in foolish actions than those who act out less frequently. This is probably why those who spend more time reading, listening and meditating are thought to be wiser than those who talk incessantly.
Four: What the heck is wisdom anyway đ¤ˇââď¸? The Oxford Dictionary's definition of wisdom as "the quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgment", once again misses the point and fails to go deeper. I believe that for one to gain experience, knowledge and good judgment, one must willingly and deliberately seek to attain these three things. However, to seek to attain these things in the first place, one needs to be aware that he does not possess them. To me, this awareness of what one lacks is at the centre of wisdom.
Five: For a man to come to the conclusion that he is lacking in wisdom, he must have extensively combed through his life experiences and observed that oftentimes he makes mistakes. Sometimes he thinks that he is right when he is actually wrong. The fool reviews similar data about his life experiences and believes that he is always right - any mistake is someone else's fault. A wise man knows that he does not have all the answers to all the questions, a fool believes that he has all the answers to all the questions. A fool is more likely to attribute a positive random outcome to his immense "skills", while a wise man is likely to recognize it as luck.
Six: I believe that it is not the attainment of knowledge that marks a person as wise. After all, we have a ton of well-educated people who sometimes think and act like absolute fools - myself included. It is the realization that one does not truly know everything about another person, topic or anything for that matter, that marks one as wise. Kong Qiu/Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), the ancient Chinese philosopher, was right on the mark when he commented, "The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life."
The craziest things I read last week:
CHELSâ WORLD đ
Value Yourself: Embrace Your Self-worth
Recognizing your own value is the first step in expecting others to recognize it too.
I've often heard the phrase: âyou need to value yourselfâ. The idea is that the worth you assign to yourself influences how others will perceive and treat you. While it sounded reasonable, the depth of its meaning eluded me until now.
By now you know I am the context-provider and storyteller when it comes to the Cat and I, so back story, I got an invite to a wedding from a friend or someone I consider a close friend and I just spiraled down memory lane to conversations we had in the recent past about how he saw me as someone he wanted to get intimate with and not in the sense of a relationship because oh well thereâs some guy code about not dating your friendâs ex but the code obviously doesnât exclude sleeping with them, it is allowable. You would have thought that shebi that would have been a reason for me to run as far as my legs would carry me but na, I am the â âwe die here in friendshipâ type until I see there is no way this friendship is working, and we end it.
While it is important to extend grace to people, it is equally important to know where to draw the boundaries. We had a long conversation the last time we saw and came to certain conclusions about how our friendship would look like from then onwards (if you ask me, it is the end of the road, we are still friends oh, our lives are absolutely just different now).
Fast-forward to this wedding invite, all I could think about was, I didnât value myself, (and no we didnât get intimate, a few kisses here and there, that I regret now, did the thought of getting intimate cross my mind, you bet it did). It doesnât matter that I was in a terrible headspace around that time, I just didnât place value on myself, my time, the people I gave my attention to and because I didnât, it meant others didnât value them as well.
If your life or the value you placed on yourself was measured by the validation of others, you would constantly need them to define your worth and what a terrible mistake that is, to give people that much power over you.
I was reading a letter from the Gather ministries, and it is always phrased like a letter from God and one sentence that stuck with me was this: âLive like you know who you areâ, I have it placed on a sticky note at my workstation. Live like you know who you are, whose you are, who your Father is, the power at work in your life.
You are valuable, you are the beloved of Abba, the value He places on your life should be mirrored in the value you place on yourself.
Until either the Cat or I come your way, this is your storyteller, Chels, signing off. Stay tuned for our next newsletter, where we will be talking about friendship. #Anticipate
The Best thing(s) I read this past week:
CURRENT READS đ
The Cat: Buy This, Not That - (By Sam Dogen)
Honey and Spice: A Reese's Book Club Pick (By Bolu Babalola)
RANDOM STUFF đ˛
