Blog16. Behind the Name Part 11

Find Your Jesters!

Back in the day, few parents wanted their kids to become a court jester. It was a dead end job. Constrained personal freedom and no upward mobility meant jesters were mostly indentured servants, plucked from lower households who had failed to settle their debts with powerful overlords. Can’t pay? Sorry, your land and pastures and servants are mine now, including you! A solid play in feudal times.

Once settled into their new digs, a jester’s main job was to entertain/distract the court through masterful displays of music, comedy, dance, and poetry. Now, medieval courts were interesting. On the surface, the big players: royalty, nobles, and clerics behaved according to public codes of politeness and decorum, however, beneath the pleasant exterior, all was muck and deceit. And what would you expect when the key objective of most was to increase, at all costs, familial wealth, power, and resources. 

Now, truly great jesters weren’t mere entertainers. Their value lay in gathering intelligence for the state. They were successful in part because most court members viewed jester’s as nothing more than animated window dressing. This invisibility gained jesters access into the dark corners where kings could not go. Here they could ferret out mutinous whispers and treasonous plots against the state. Not perceiving a threat to their position or power, the unsuspecting nobles would relax their pretensions, allowing their more sinister intentions to surface. First hand intel. Power without power.  

Since then, a jester’s implied meaning has evolved. Associations with mirth, potential mischief, and unpredictability can remain, however, the jesters among us can be a source of unvarnished truth. Their wisdom comes from hard-won experience, not theoretical knowledge, which could illuminate a path toward achieving a particular goal of yours. 

Truth be told, they are all around us, and like their medieval brethren, hiding in plain sight. As an example, you might want to be an actor.  Do you know any? If so, go ask them what the job is really like. Exposing the gritty details that they endure on a daily basis will dispel any dreamy notions you have about it. This way you go into a situation with your eyes wide open. Honest and wise. Your feelings be damned. That’s a jester.