April Fool?

We begin the month with a day dedicated to practical jokes, pranks, and hoaxes.: All Fools Day. Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1, became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. Others have linked April Fools’ Day to festivals such as Hilaria, which was celebrated in ancient Rome at the end of March or that it was tied to the vernal equinox, the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, when Mother Nature fooled people with changing, unpredictable weather.

In Italy, France and Belgium, pranks included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), symbolizing a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person. In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees. Many viewers were so fooled, the BBC was flooded with requests to purchase a spaghetti plant. In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.

How have you been fooled in life? Let's inquire into the Truth of it all, the cause. In CREATIVE MIND AND SUCCESS, Dr. Ernest Homes reminds us that:

God's world is not a world of illusion but one of divine realities. The truth must not explain away things that we see. It must explain what they are. We are living and experiencing varying degrees of consciousness and conditions. ...we must not judge from the standpoint of the seen but must judge righteously or with right judgment ...get behind the appearance and find out what caused it. So let us not in any way fool ourselves nor allow ourselves to believe we have always been fooled. We are living in a world of realities. Whatever we have experienced is a reality as far as that experience is concerned, although if we had had a higher understanding of life, the unpleasant experience might have been avoided.

Whether we participated in April Fools Day or not, we know our Divine motives in life are always to be in love, joy, fun, peace and prosperity; expressing kindness and compassion, dignity and respect to all, while sharing our time, talent and treasure. When your thoughts, feelings and beliefs come through those motives with clarity and intention, watch your life transcend, soar and thrive. And I'm not fooling!