The Fool, The Method & Satee Bhave Hall

A Fool Investigates the Curious Business of Being Human

I have been observing human beings for quite some time.

I am one myself, although I occasionally have doubts.

We are extraordinary creatures.

A tree grows without worrying whether it is growing successfully.

A river flows without attending a workshop on overcoming its fear of flowing.

A bird sings without asking whether the other birds think it has a good voice.

And then there is the human being.

Before breakfast, we may already have worried about our appearance, achievements, failures, relationships, future, past, and what somebody meant by saying fine in a slightly peculiar tone yesterday.

We have invented a remarkable number of ways to be unhappy about being ourselves.

And we carry around a little word that seems to be involved in nearly all of them.

Who I am. Who I ought to be. Who I was. Who I might become. Who other people think I am.

By the time everyone has been introduced, there is hardly room left in the head for the person who actually lives there.

I began to wonder whether all these versions of I might be having a committee meeting.

And whether anybody had remembered to invite the rest of life.

A Sparrow Raises an Objection

One morning, while I was thinking about all this, a sparrow was having a bath in a puddle outside.

It was a very small puddle.

The sparrow appeared delighted.

It did not seem concerned about personal growth, childhood conditioning, social identity, or whether its feathers were making a good impression.

It simply splashed about.

I found this deeply suspicious.

Perhaps the sparrow knew something.

Or perhaps it was simply a sparrow.

Both possibilities interested me.

And so I began investigating the curious business of being human.

Not to become less human.

To see whether being human might be a little less complicated than we have made it.

The Fool Method

Fortunately, I had company.

Lao Tzu came along with the Tao and a rather relaxed attitude towards getting somewhere.

Zen arrived, sat down, and asked who was doing all this thinking.

Ecology suggested that perhaps the I wasn't an isolated little island after all, but part of a living world of relationships.

Gregory Bateson brought his extraordinary understanding of patterns, relationships, communication and the ecology of mind.

And Theatre arrived with a trunk full of costumes and asked which character I would like to be today.

I said I was trying to find out who I really was.

Theatre handed me another hat.

This was not particularly helpful.

Or perhaps it was.

And slowly, through reading, writing, theatre, teaching, experimenting, getting things wrong, and occasionally noticing what was happening right under my nose, something began to take shape.

I called it The Fool Method.

Not because I had discovered a method for living correctly.

Quite the opposite.

It is a way of investigating what happens when we stop being quite so certain about who we are, how life should behave, and what ought to happen next.

A method for remembering to forget.

Which is a ridiculous description.

I rather like it.

The I Theatre

A curious theatre lives inside each of us.

On its stage appear the sensible I, the frightened I, the offended I, the loving I, the ambitious I, the disappointed I, and the I who has just announced that it understands everything.

Each character has a story.

Some have been rehearsing their lines for years.

And sometimes we become so absorbed in the performance that we forget there might be another way to play the scene.

I call this The I Theatre.

Through conversation, observation, original workbooks, games, creative experiments and theatre exercises, The Fool Method invites us to explore these familiar performances.

Not to destroy the characters.

Not to manufacture a perfect new I.

But to discover what becomes possible when we are a little less certain about the stories we tell ourselves.

The Fool tries to dance in sync with nature.

Not as its managing director.

As one of its participants.

And Who Is This Fool?

Ah. I suppose an introduction is overdue.

Satee Bhave Hall is the writer, theatre maker, educator and creator of The Fool Method.

I am the Fool.

The distinction is not always obvious.

Satee has spent much of her life exploring human behaviour, relationships, happiness, Tao, Zen, ecology, epistemology, cybernetics and systems thinking.

Her studies include Neuro-Linguistic Programming, the Science of Happiness through the University of California, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, and Fritjof Capra's The Systems View of Life.

She has worked in writing, education and theatre, and has spent years developing original exercises, workbooks and creative approaches to exploring the human mind.

Among her companions in this adventure have been Lao Tzu, Zhuangzi, J. Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Gregory Bateson, Carl Jung and many others.

But her greatest teachers have been much closer to home.

Her family, her friends, the people she has loved, disagreed with, misunderstood and been surprised by.

Her everyday Buddhas.

No university could have taught her quite what they have.

And somewhere between all this reading, living, loving, writing and experimenting, Satee made a rather extraordinary discovery.

How little she knew.

Especially about herself.

She began to suspect that being a Fool might be a perfectly reasonable way of living in an unreasonable world.

Eventually, she created The Fool Method.

Then came The Uncounsellor, The House Fool and The Fool's Motley.

I suggested she might like to sit down for a while.

She opened a room called Fursat.

I suppose that is one way of taking advice.

A House With Several Doors

The Fool Method now has a little world of its own.

The Uncounsellor is where we explore happiness and designing life through individual conversations, original tools and workbooks.

The House Fool is where workshops, theatre, experiments, stories, games and occasional gatherings find a home. Inside are The Fool's Sandbox, The Fool Theatre and Fursat.

The Fool's Motley is my independent publishing house, where books, diaries, stories, workbooks, illustrations and other curiosities find their way into the world.

Some rooms are busy.

Some are quiet.

Some are still waiting to be discovered.

There is no compulsory attendance.

No ideal personality waiting at the finish line.

No examination to establish who is the greatest Fool.

I should hate to lose.

Before You Come In

You don't need to be spiritual.

You don't need to understand Tao, Zen, ecology, psychology or theatre.

You don't need to have a problem.

You don't need to have solved one.

You don't even need to agree with the Fool.

In fact, disagreement can be rather entertaining.

Bring your questions, your doubts, your stories, your curiosity, your tiredness, your enthusiasm and your uncertainty.

Or bring nothing.

The trees are not expecting anything from you.

Neither am I.

Come as you are. Being human is quite sufficient.

— The Fool

A Little Bow to Sparky

Who Left the Door Open?

I suspect Charles M. Schulz had something to do with it.

For the past twenty years, Robin has written me a good morning email every single day.

And every morning, without fail, he sends me Peanuts.

It's our little whatever.

A small, ordinary, extraordinary thing that has quietly become part of the rhythm of our lives.

So, every morning, before I begin being a Fool, I read Peanuts. It is reassuring to know that somebody has already begun.

Charlie Brown arrives with his worries. Lucy arrives with her certainties. Linus brings his questions. Snoopy brings his imagination. And Woodstock doesn't seem particularly concerned about any of it.

Nobody has to become somebody else before joining the conversation.

Charles M. Schulz, affectionately known as Sparky, understood the extraordinary theatre of ordinary human beings.

Our fears, hopes, contradictions, disappointments, little triumphs and magnificent absurdities.

He never insisted that Charlie Brown become a winner.

He simply let him be Charlie Brown.

And somehow, that was enough.

I have learnt a great deal about being human from these little people with their enormous questions. About tenderness without sentimentality, wisdom without sermons, and laughter that never needs to humiliate anyone.

Perhaps that is why I love leaving the door open.

For the worriers and the wonderers. The philosophers and the daydreamers. The people who have everything figured out and those who haven't the faintest idea what they're doing.

For all of us.

And so, when I ask, “Who Left the Door Open?”, I must acknowledge two gentlemen.

One who has been sending Peanuts through that door every morning for twenty years.

And one who created the little world that keeps coming in.

Thank you, Robin.

Thank you, Sparky.

The door is still open.