The Barefoot Corporate Warrior
Whimsy With a Dash of Folly Sir/Madam? Paul Bird finds out more.
There’s not a lot of room for whimsy and folly in our modern world…or is there? According to Collins Dictionary, ‘whimsy’ is behaviour which is unusual, playful and unpredictable, rather than having any serious reason or purpose behind it; while ‘folly’ is associated with foolish actions or behaviours.
Let’s take the ‘whim’ test first: a friend calls you one afternoon and offers you two free tickets to a show starting in a few hours which you would enjoy. You have nothing on, the show is at a nearby venue which you have never been to, but it is not what you were expecting to happen that night. It’s a change of plans; or in this instance, no plans. Think quick! Do you accept the offer and venture towards something previously unanticipated? On a whim? Or do you demur, beg-off or otherwise fade to grey – preferring the comfort of the television and couch? Whichever path you choose it is entirely yours. No judgement here.
We want to say ‘yes’ don’t we but often something stops us from giving way to what looks like a whim, a fancy, a flitting in an unanticipated direction. I have been thinking about proactively introducing additional acts of whimsy into my life – although, if it’s planned can it really be whimsy? I’m not just talking about responding to an unexpected invitation. I am talking about proactively introducing actions which can be unusual, playful, unpredictable. I feel there could be benefits in pursuing actions, activities and places either on the spur-of-the-moment or foreshadowed as a strategy of ‘manufacturing’ circumstances to shake me out of any routines or doldrums, real or imagined; to add some spice to life.
Ask yourself the question: when was the last time you indulged yourself in a whimsical moment? Are you so locked into the expectations fashioned by your mindworms that you resist anything which does not conform to the ways things were ‘supposed to be’? Do you easily dismiss an idea which pops into your head for an interesting or enjoyable moment, no matter how eccentric it might seem to others?
A little whimsy and folly training might be in order. It’s true that whimsy has an air of frivolity, of not being serious, and is often associated with impulse and desire. We may think of it as being irrational. Let’s look at it’s more menacing travelling companion – ‘folly’. Folly gets a bad rap, often given responsibility for monumental mistakes and too much in-the-moment without the input of rational thought. And yes, it seems that The Prince of Folly often walks dutifully three paces behind its monarch Queen Whimsy. And in Prince Folly’s wake is his companion, fear. An action initiated on a spur-of-the-moment whim can quickly turn into an act-of-folly with serious consequences. However, lower down the folly continuum, small acts of foolishness might actually add to the experience of a full human life.
I love the notion that an architectural folly is a specific, technical description for buildings designed and constructed without any real purpose; built purely as decoration to engender a reaction. These strange, puzzling structures often provide an insight into the mental meanderings and imaginative excess of the designer or owner. Take, for instance, the Needle’s Eye in England – a 14-metre pyramid thought to originate as a bet involving a particular boast by the Marquess of Rockingham that he could “drive a coach and horses through an eye of a needle”. Built to the width of a horse carriage, if true, he likely won his bet. Or The Dunmore Pineapple in Scotland, originally a greenhouse topped by a giant Pineapple (and you thought we had the only one here on the Sunshine Coast?). In Ireland there are so many that they even have a name for them – the Famine Follies – because of the number built during the famine to provide work for an impoverished and starving population.
What makes architectural follies even more intriguing is that while we might think what is the point? they were in fact deliberate, planned and envisioned by someone; they were a deliberate mistake. Deliberate acts of whimsy and folly seem to fit this model nicely. Turning follies on their head, we can see them as learnings or as amusing moments. Follies don’t necessarily have to engender shame and/or regret. We can bring forgiveness, of self and others, to some of the follies which on first glance seem to have blighted, rather than enriched, a life or lives.
Opening up to kindness and understanding of other people’s moments of whimsy and folly opens the door to a new understanding of the potential benefits. The last three centuries in particular are littered with stories of hare-brained derring-do. For me, the ‘Great Age of Whimsy and Folly’ arrived with the Industrial Revolution – all those enthusiastic men and women launching themselves on death-defying adventures using all manner of half-baked and untested machines. These ventures were often against current thinking or standards of acceptability. They embraced whimsy and folly as potential great moments for personal and human advancement. Alas, it did not always go well or according to plan. And that is partly the point also.
Some of these acts provided great benefits to humankind – think Jonas Salk, who introduced his polio vaccine to himself and his own children as part of his early trials leading to the (almost) universal eradication of this terrible disease. Was it folly to do so? Is it time you made room for whimsy with a dash of folly in your life? The pros might just outweigh the cons.
