The Fool Who Only Wants to Speak His Mind
“A fool does not want understanding; he wants only to show what is in his heart.” A Verse That Cuts Deep One verse in the Book of Proverbs, written by King Solomon, cuts to the very depths of the soul: “A fool does not want understanding; he wants only to show what is in his heart.” This needs explaining. The verse does not say that the fool cannot reach understanding. It says that he does not want it. This is not about talent. It is not a limit of the mind. It is a choice. The fool chooses not to want it. In place of understanding, he looks for one thing only: “to show what is in his heart.” To express himself. To push what is inside him out into the open. To be heard. So what is wrong with that? What Makes a Fool My dear young married friend, stop and think for a moment. How many times have you seen someone doing something, and right away, almost by reflex, a comment rose up inside you? With your son, with your wife, with a friend in your Torah class. “That’s not how you do it.” “There’s a problem here.” “I can see what isn’t working.” That is “showing what is in his heart.” And it is amazingly easy. Pointing out what is broken is the easiest job there is. Anyone can stand next to a building that someone else is putting up and count the missing bricks, the cracks, the wall that isn’t straight. There is no wisdom in that. There is no inner work in it at all. It is an eye that looks only at the outside: at what is visible, what can be seen, what is “broken.” The fool is not a wicked person. Sometimes he even “means well.” But he stops at the surface, and from there he judges. And a judgment that comes from the surface is always a harsh one, without compassion and without understanding. What Makes a Wise Person The wise person is different. He chooses understanding. And what is understanding? In the Hebrew of the verse, the word for understanding comes from the word for “between.” To understand means to stand between things, between the details, and to see what connects them. This is the power of looking deeply. You do not see the broken pieces one by one. You see the building that someone is trying to put up. The wise person slows down. He asks: What is he doing? What is he trying to build? What is the inner intention here? He does not rush to a verdict, because he knows that what the eye can see is not the end of the story. Under the surface there is a soul, there is an intention, there is a process. To see all that, you need something the fool is not willing to pay: setting the self aside. Quieting the “I” so that the “you” can come in. Our Sages teach the same thing in the Mishnah: “Judge every person favorably.” This does not mean making up forced excuses, and it does not mean closing your eyes. It means seeing the person from where he stands: his “building,” the good point inside him that he is acting from. First the Building, Then the Criticism And here is the new insight this verse reveals to us. Some people say, “My criticism is constructive.” That is exactly where the hidden trap lies. In truly constructive criticism, the building has to come before the criticism, not after it. If you open by pointing to the flaw and then add, “But I mean well,” the flaw has already been spoken. The verdict has already been sealed. After that, no amount of “good” will help. It is already destructive, even if it wears a nice name. The very act of looking deeply and trying to understand is itself the act that builds. When I slow down, when I ask, when I try to understand what the other person is building, I have already done something. I have already built a bridge. From there, if there is room to say something, my words come from a completely different place. In the language of Hasidic teaching, seeing only the “outside” is the attribute of strict judgment. It is holding back. It is a narrow, ungenerous eye. Seeing the “inside” (the soul, the intention, the inner building) is the attribute of compassion. It is a good, generous eye. This is what Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi wrote in the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought: true love for every Jew means seeing the soul, the inner spark, and not stopping at the body and the outside.
Putting It into Practice
So here is the simple tool this verse offers: Before you open your mouth, stop. Ask yourself one question: What is he building? Not “What went wrong?” Not “What’s missing?” Not “Where’s the mistake?” Instead: What is he trying to build? Your son, your wife, your friend, your coworker: what inner intention is moving them? If you have answered that question, even partly, you are already wise. You are already standing inside their “building,” not outside it. From there, your words, even if they are a comment, even if they are a correction, will come from a place of understanding, not from “showing what is in your heart.” “A fool does not want understanding.” That is because understanding demands that you want it. It demands that you choose. And we choose to want it.
Questions and answers
Q: Which verse in Proverbs says a fool does not want understanding but only to show what is in his heart?
Rabbi Landau answers: “A fool does not want understanding; he wants only to show what is in his heart.”
Q: Why does Proverbs say the fool does not want understanding, rather than that he cannot reach it?
Rabbi Landau answers: One verse in the Book of Proverbs, written by King Solomon, cuts to the very depths of the soul: “A fool does not want understanding; he wants only to show what is in his heart.” This needs explaining. The verse does not say that the fool cannot reach understanding. It says that he does not want it. This is not about talent. It is not a limit of the mind. It is a choice. The fool chooses not to want it. In place of understanding, he looks for one thing only: “to show what is in his heart.” To express himself. To push what is inside him out into the open. To be heard.
Q: What does understanding mean, and what makes a person wise according to this essay?
Rabbi Landau answers: The wise person is different. He chooses understanding. And what is understanding? In the Hebrew of the verse, the word for understanding comes from the word for “between.” To understand means to stand between things, between the details, and to see what connects them. This is the power of looking deeply. You do not see the broken pieces one by one. You see the building that someone is trying to put up. The wise person slows down. He asks: What is he doing? What is he trying to build? What is the inner intention here? He does not rush to a verdict, because he knows that what the eye can see is not the end of the story.
Q: What is the hidden trap in "constructive criticism"?
Rabbi Landau answers: And here is the new insight this verse reveals to us. Some people say, “My criticism is constructive.” That is exactly where the hidden trap lies. In truly constructive criticism, the building has to come before the criticism, not after it. If you open by pointing to the flaw and then add, “But I mean well,” the flaw has already been spoken. The verdict has already been sealed. After that, no amount of “good” will help. It is already destructive, even if it wears a nice name. The very act of looking deeply and trying to understand is itself the act that builds.
Q: What question should I ask myself before criticizing my child, wife or coworker?
Rabbi Landau answers: So here is the simple tool this verse offers: Before you open your mouth, stop. Ask yourself one question: What is he building? Not “What went wrong?” Not “What’s missing?” Not “Where’s the mistake?” Instead: What is he trying to build? Your son, your wife, your friend, your coworker: what inner intention is moving them? If you have answered that question, even partly, you are already wise. You are already standing inside their “building,” not outside it.