The days of telling aboriginal tales and mythological stories to little ones to impart wisdom seem few given all the modern characters in libraries, on television and in movies. While I love those old stories, I recognize that the characters and language that resonate now perhaps need to be different. It would be shortsighted of me to think our evolution is limited to physical shifts.
We can swap the look of characters and change semantics all we want to engage their little minds, but when I drop the names, language and specifics in current stories, the nature of modern characters who teach us still seem timeless. Our modern storytellers offer different narrative, but the essentials of wisdom-filled stories haven’t changed much. We continue to have the trickster. To which I cry—Thank goodness!
Our journeys could be arduous without the tricksters.
Since tale weaving began, storytellers have entrusted the trickster character with sparking a different kind of learning in their cultures. The trickster wakes us up. The trickster shows up uninvited sowing and watering the seeds of chaos and taking characters out of their comfort zones to create much-needed shifts in attitudes and perspectives. The trickster is a gift to one’s personal and spiritual evolution.
For those of us who study yoga, the trickster comes in the form of Krishna in The Bhagavad Gita. For a 5- year old in suburbia USA, the trickster may show up as The Cat in the Hat in Dr. Seuss tales, Coyote in Gerald McDermott stories, etc. The trickster appears in more children’s stories than I could name here. The pervasiveness of this character is impressive and tells me one thing: as a species, we haven’t lost our need for that wisdom.
We need the mindfulness lessons the trickster imparts. Knocking us off balance, highlighting our non-serving habits, and pointing out our lack of humor are the trickster’s tactics to show us the value of flexibility, caring from a detached place, and keeping our ego at bay. The trickster makes us pause to consciously or unconsciously question our perspectives and ways of being.
But the Cat in the Hat isn’t walking through my front door on a rainy day, and not all of us read children’s books. It’s worth remembering that the trickster can be human too!
Who’s shown up in your life “disrupting” your natural way of thinking, being and acting? Did his/her exit from your life coincide with a shift in perspective? or dropping a habit that wasn’t serving you? or getting less engrossed in the little things?
All of those little shifts spread over the course of our lives add up to being more mindful. I owe much of my understanding of my habits, attachments and self-serving perspectives to the tricksters in my life. Some have entertained me in story. Most have made in-person debuts. I owe the moments when I laugh at myself to the seeds planted and sown over time by my contingent of tricksters.
I’m grateful to tricksters come and gone for enhancing my awareness. And I’m thankful, writers, for your work to keep the trickster alive in new guises. There is always room for being more mindful and sharing this wisdom tradition with new generations.
May we all learn and grow from our tricksters. Namaste.
