Persistence vs Pragmatism. What Clowns Teach Us About Carrying on When Times Get Tough.

This blog is an extract from forthcoming book by Barnaby King, ‘FOOLISH WISDOM: What Clowns Can Teach Us About Leading Happier and More Fulfilled Lives.’

Clowns are notoriously optimistic. They often cling to their goals with a tenacity that borders on the robotic. And that’s often where the laughter lies. The philosopher Henri Bergson described this kind of humor as “the mechanical encrusted on the living”: a moment when a human being behaves with the blind, repetitive logic of a machine. And yet there is something so human about this, isn’t there?

A delightful example of this is Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box. Tasked with delivering a piano to a house at the top of a long flight of steps, they push and heave their precious cargo upwards, only for it to come crashing down again and again, jangling with dissonant notes as it tumbles to the bottom. Never once do they think of looking for another route. Their logic is flawless, their persistence heroic, and their failure inevitable.

Short clip from Laurel & Hardy's The Music Box. You can watch the whole thing here.

We laugh, of course. We laugh because we feel superior: we’d never be that stupid, we tell ourselves. But we also laugh with a pang of recognition. We, too, keep pushing our metaphorical pianos uphill, insisting that this - this exact way - is the only way, long after the evidence suggests otherwise. The clown’s rigidity exposes our own.

This may show up in our lives in a variety of situations, both big and small. Maybe we have been struggling in a toxic or painful relationship, but we keep thinking ‘tomorrow will be better’. Maybe we are trying to build a business that has been losing money consistently, but we tell ourselves success could be just around the corner. Or maybe we are hopelessly addicted to ice cream but each time we guiltily open the freezer we tell ourselves the diet will start tomorrow (yes, I raise my hand to this one).

The fact is that in each of these cases our blind optimism and resilience may be vindicated. Things might get better, just through the incremental effect of repetition and time. Maybe putting our heads down and pushing through will lead to a breakthrough.

We could interpret Laurel and Hardy’s sisyphean persistence as admirable resilience. They do make it to the top eventually, after all, although their cargo winds up getting accidentally destroyed. Should we take this as an encouragement to keep climbing, no matter how many times our pianos tumble to the bottom? Or could it be that the clowns here are making fun of our foolish, machine-like pursuit of the impossible? Demonstrating, through reverse logic, what not to do? Is the clown trying to whisper in our ear that it’s okay sometimes to let go of a goal, to try a different route, or even abandon the path altogether?

Monkey eating ice-cream -- Photo by Syed Ali on Unsplash

In our real lives we usually do have a choice whether to push through towards our goals or to let go and allow life to lead the way. We could think of this choice in terms of two contrary approaches to life: an inductive approach and a deductive approach (sorry for the academic jargon). The inductive way involves setting a dream or a goal, however large or arbitrary, and then pursuing it relentlessly, even when others think you’re absurd. You begin with a big vision for the future and then set about working to make it real (inducing it), ignoring what happens along the way. The other extreme - a deductive approach - is to live life entirely in the moment, to go about your day without direction, and to allow your plans to evolve as life happens to you, responding to what unfolds.

It is definitely possible to defend either approach to life as being the wiser one. But of course it doesn’t have to be binary either/or choice, and probably true wisdom lies somewhere in between. But it’s good to remember that - unlike Laurel and Hardy in their film - we have the power to step back, notice the dilemma, and decide whether to keep pushing or to change direction. Yet so many of us fail to use this awareness, confusing stubbornness with strength or fear with wisdom. Some pursue their goals with grim determination long after joy has left the building. Others abandon goals altogether, drifting aimlessly to avoid the pain of failure. Neither extreme brings balance or fulfillment.

Clowns often reveal our folly to us through the use of ironic simplification. In The Music Box, the clowns ridicule our inflexibility of thinking, and they do so by enacting that very tendency. They embody archetypes and present exaggerated situations in order to reveal the truth in sharp relief. Stan and Ollie’s rigidity is funny precisely because it is too much - because it magnifies our own habits of thought until we can finally see them. By making folly visible, clowning gives us a chance to recognize and release it.

The great Jef Johnson

But there is also a broader critique. The clown’s rigidity mirrors the rigidity of our societies: our dogmas, prejudices, and unexamined certainties. Every time a clown falls off a chair or trips over their own feet, they are reminding us how absurd our fixed ideas can be and how much suffering they cause when we mistake them for truth. At the same time, the clown’s relentless persistence speaks to something deeply admirable in us: the refusal to give up, even in the face of repeated defeat. 

The quality of blind unwavering persistence is the very heart of the human condition. It exists on the individual, personal level just as it exists on the societal group level. But the clowns give us a double-edged critique. Persistence is paradoxically noble and foolish; it can (and does) lead to the greatest of human accomplishments and the gravest human disasters. Our stubbornness, like that of the clown, is both our glory and our downfall.

So the clown’s lesson is not to tell us what to do. It is to reveal who we are and remind us that we have choices. We are given a blinding glimpse of our true nature, but not told what to do about it. How we choose to act on that insight is up to us. The point is to recognize both our limitations and our potentials and then take the next step with humility and intention.

If these questions about persistence, folly, and human nature spark something in you… if you feel the tug of the clown’s wisdom and want to explore it in community, come join us in the Clown Spirit Village.