Love is being stupid together.
Paul Valéry

I love being stupid together with people I love. By “being stupid”, I don’t mean being reckless, mindless, rude, or indifferent, but I mean being playful, relaxed, and delightful.

Instead of being serious, I prefer to be stupid in this sense. What did I mean by “being serious”? Something like being tense and inflexible.

I’m often perceived as a serious person, but seriousness in the sense of being tense and inflexible is something I want to let go. Instead of seriousness, I want more of playfulness, ease, and delight in my life.

I love what Paul Valéry says about love. (If you liked the Paul Valéry quote, you might enjoy  reading my annotated collection of 65 love quotes as well.)

I agree with him that love is being stupid together; I want my love to be stupid in the sense I mentioned above rather than to be tense and inflexible.

One clue I have about how to stop being serious is to throw away the “what about me” attitude. I can understand it’s natural to worry about yourself – I do that too, but instead of being paralyzed by placing too much emphasis on yourself, you can choose to find absurdity in things you experience and choose to laugh at yourself.

When you are interacting with someone, instead of basing this interaction on the “what about me” attitude, you can choose to be curious about that person and pay more attention to him/her than to yourself. Oh, and forget about trying to impress him/her.

The idea of being stupid together applies to self-love as well, I believe.

Just like being stupid together with people you love, why don’t you be stupid together with yourself too? Instead of labelling your thoughts, feelings, desires, and dreams as silly and stupid and pinning them down, why don’t you be silly and stupid together with the part of you that you label as silly and stupid? That’s some self-love for you.

And, hey, we can be stupid together too.