February: Inheritance

On resilience, humor, and what we carry...

The Fool from the Rider–Waite tarot deck

Last month, we moved, and life began again. Belongings were packed, unpacked, and placed around our new space. I’ve had to create new routines and keep a few. I expected change, but I didn’t expect to feel—content.

It’s not that I was always chasing sensation, but a small part of me believed that stationary = stagnant. I no longer feel that way.

Happy Quiet Life remarked on a recent post about my ability to balance drama, hardships, and humor in my memoir. This got me thinking about resilience.

Years of living abroad—adapting to pivots in place, work, and friendship again and again—have given me a kind of turtle-shell resilience, protective but mobile, in the best sense. But I inherited part of it from my mother, who ignited my imagination early and modeled what a wounded warrior looks like: someone who never learned the word quit and somehow kept laughing along the way.

I used to believe humor was my shield, my weapon, my dance to gain attention. Now, I see it as so much more. It’s been a great teacher. Demonstrating how to bend in the wind and crack the ice.

I’ve witnessed the cross-cultural magic it can bring. I studied it like a school subject, looking up at the TV, howling with delight over comedians’ abilities to coax and control the narrative with a wink.

And how could we forget the King and Queen’s fool? Only the fool can dare speak the truth, whereas the court can only cringe and comply. But not everyone listens to the fool because—well, the clue is in the name. Methinks you talk too much ‘ol fool.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung