Laughing at Don Quixote

Living for Sancho Panza

I. The Fool and His Shadow

The Lord of the Rings is not about the Lord of the Rings.

There is a man who believes in chivalry. He wears armor rusted by time and rides into battle on a starving horse. His name is Don Quixote, and the world sees him as a joke.

There is another who rides beside him. A peasant. A realist. He knows the windmills aren’t giants. He knows the inns aren’t castles. But he follows the knight anyway. His name is Sancho Panza, and he is often overlooked.

Together, they form a single mind—divided between the soul that dreams and the body that endures.

Don Quixote is not admirable because he is right. He is admirable because he dares to be wrong in the direction of beauty. He chooses to see the world as it ought to be, even when it costs him dignity. His madness is not chaos—it is structure. An architecture built from the ruins of ideals abandoned by everyone else.

Sancho is not a fool for following him. He is something rarer: a man who understands the value of loyalty, even when he does not share the vision. He is rooted in the earth, but drawn upward by love. Quixote is ridiculous. Sancho knows it. But he rides anyway.

This is the model we need. The noble fool and the loyal friend. The visionary and the ballast. The one who leaps, and the one who steadies.

All of us live somewhere between them. All of us are made of their contradiction.

II. The World Laughs at Quixote

I do not deny that what happened to us is a thing worth laughing at. But it is not worth telling, for not everyone is sufficiently intelligent to be able to see things from the right point of view.

-Don Quixote

It is always the idealist who draws laughter.

He walks into a room and speaks of truth, duty, love, courage. The air changes. People shift in their chairs. They smile—not kindly, but nervously, mockingly. He is sincere. He means what he says. That alone is enough to make him a target.

Modernity worships the clever man, not the good one. We grant prestige to those who can deconstruct, undermine, and expose. To live transparently, with purpose and conviction, is to invite ridicule. It is to wear armor in an age of sarcasm. It is to speak of honor while others speak in hashtags.

Don Quixote is not mocked because he is dangerous. He is mocked because he is pure. Because he reminds people of what they once believed and chose to forget. He breaks the pact of collective irony. He ruins the game by refusing to play it. And for that, he becomes comedy.

But beneath the laughter lies fear.

The world cannot bear a man who lives as though virtue matters. It cannot tolerate someone who sees beyond the surface and acts accordingly. His presence is a rebuke. His quest, though absurd, is too earnest to ignore. So we laugh. We point. We roll our eyes.

It is a defense mechanism.

Because if he is not a fool, then we are cowards.

III. Sancho's Secret Conversion

The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.

-Don Quixote

Sancho begins as a pragmatist. He follows the knight not out of reverence, but out of hope—hope for an island, for reward, for some material gain promised by a madman. He is tethered to the earth, bound to the world as it is. But the journey changes him.

He does not become a knight. He never sees giants in windmills. But he sees something else—something stranger. A man who refuses to bend. A man who is humiliated and bruised, mocked and beaten, but who never lets the world dictate his soul. Sancho cannot look away.

At first, he follows the knight as a fool. Then he follows him as a friend. By the end, he follows him as something close to a believer.

This is the mystery of loyalty: it reshapes both the one who gives it and the one who receives it. Sancho learns that being right is not enough. That the facts of the world do not account for its meaning. That following a madman with purpose is better than walking alone with none.

The realist becomes elevated through proximity to the dreamer. He does not lose his grip on the ground—but he begins to glance upward. Something in him is stirred. He begins to play the role, even if he does not share the vision. And in playing it, he is changed.

This is not a story of madness infecting the sane. It is a story of courage awakening in the timid.

IV. What Is Cringe but Unashamed Virtue?

There was no lie in Pippin's eyes. A fool, but an honest fool he remains. He told Sauron nothing of Frodo and the Ring. We've been strangely fortunate. Pippin saw in the Palanti­r a glimpse of the Enemy's plan.

-Gandalf the White

There is a modern word for what Quixote embodies: cringe.

It is the accusation we level against anyone who tries too hard, speaks too plainly, or believes too sincerely. It is not a critique of content, but of posture. Cringe is the social punishment for earnestness. For saying “I love you” without irony. For raising your hand. For speaking of the good, the true, or the beautiful without winking.

To be cringe is to be exposed.

This is why most people armor themselves in sarcasm. They learn to deflect before they’re hit. They speak in memes. They retreat into detached cleverness. Better to laugh first than be laughed at. Better to destroy than be destroyed. The internet has trained an entire generation to fear sincerity more than sin.

But nothing noble can survive in irony. Nothing sacred grows in detachment.

To be virtuous, you must look ridiculous. You must try. You must fail. You must say what you mean and be misunderstood. You must look at windmills and call them dragons, knowing full well what the world will say. You must wear the armor even if it doesn’t fit.

Quixote does not fear being cringe. He charges toward it. And in doing so, he becomes free. Not free from mockery—but free from its power.

The path to dignity is paved with embarrassment. Every holy thing begins as a joke. Every saint is first mistaken for a fool.

V. Madness as a Moral Compass

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Don Quixote’s madness is not chaos—it is commitment.

He does not misperceive the world by accident. He misperceives it by choice. He sees a tavern and calls it a castle. He sees a farmer’s daughter and names her a lady. These are not hallucinations. They are acts of reverence. He has chosen to live in a world shaped by ideals, not appearances.

This is the madness of the saint, the prophet, the poet. It is not a confusion of reality. It is a rejection of its terms.

To most people, sanity means seeing things “as they are.” But what if the world, as it is, is broken? What if it rewards cowardice, punishes virtue, flattens beauty, and sells irony as wisdom? In such a world, perhaps madness is the sanest response. Perhaps delusion is the last form of integrity.

Don Quixote’s mind is not diseased—it is disciplined. He disciplines it away from cynicism, from cruelty, from the boredom of modern life. He sees meaning where others see convenience. He raises gestures into rituals. He turns common life into sacred theatre.

And what does he get in return? Bruises. Humiliation. Laughter. But also freedom. Also purpose. Also transcendence.

His madness is not a loss of contact with the real. It is a decision to live for something higher than the real. A refusal to accept that the world must remain as it is.

And when he rides, he rides toward a better one.

VI. The Realists Have Built Nothing

With the slaying of the last dragon came the slaying of the last dragon-slayers.

The realist is respected. He is measured, serious, grounded. He does not dream—he plans. He does not believe—he calculates. He is admired for his restraint, for his cool dismissal of anything grand or noble. He is, we are told, the adult in the room.

But what has he built?

Where are the cathedrals raised by the cynics? Where are the songs written by those who sneer at romance? What monuments have been left by the disenchanted?

The realist critiques, but does not create. He disassembles with precision, but never dares to design. He protects himself from error, but also from greatness. And so he remains safe, and small, and sterile. He becomes the advisor, never the leader. The consultant, never the prophet.

It is the fool, the idealist, the dreamer—Quixote—who builds.

Yes, he fails. Yes, he looks absurd. But he moves. He acts. He loves. And from his motion, from his refusal to freeze in caution, something new begins. The realist watches the world with crossed arms. The dreamer rides out to change it.

Realism, without imagination, builds nothing. It can only maintain what has already been made. It cannot make meaning. It cannot generate glory. It cannot inspire.

We need realists to temper our reach. But without the fool’s fire, there is nothing to temper. Without madness, we would still be in the cave, afraid of the sky.

Someone must be willing to charge.

VII. Every Age Needs a Knight

Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.

-Cormac McCarthy

The trappings have changed. There are no more castles, no more dragons, no more tournaments beneath a royal banner. But the need remains. Every age requires a knight—someone who lives by vows, who speaks in the language of honor, who refuses to treat virtue as obsolete.

Today’s knight will not wear steel. He will not ride a horse. He may sit in a cubicle. He may write code, paint icons, or run a small café. His battles will be unseen. His victories will be mocked. But he will still carry the same banner.

The knight is not defined by weapons. He is defined by allegiance—to beauty, to duty, to the good. He fights not for gain, but for glory rightly understood: the glory of standing firm when no one else will. The glory of being laughed at and continuing anyway.

We need these men and women now more than ever. In a time of systems without soul, of institutions without courage, of speech emptied of meaning, the knight reminds us that life is not measured by efficiency or status. It is measured by fidelity.

He will be misunderstood. The world will call him naive. But so be it. Every previous knight was mocked too. Every vow once sounded like madness. Every holy act looked foolish in the moment.

Still, the knight rides. Not because the world is worthy—but because he chooses to be.

VIII. Choose the Windmill

To dream the impossible dream, that is my quest.

-Don Quixote

A windmill is not a dragon. It grinds grain. It turns with the wind. It is harmless, mechanical, ordinary. To see it as a monster is, by all modern standards, madness.

But Don Quixote rides anyway.

This is his most famous act, the one that defines him in the public imagination. A fool attacking machinery. A man lost in delusion. We quote it to mock those who fight the wrong battles. But we forget what it really means.

To fight a windmill is to reject the world’s reduction of life to function. It is to say: I see something more than gears and levers. I see threat. I see challenge. I see evil disguised as order. And I will not bow to it.

This is not confusion. It is conviction.

Don Quixote is not blind. He knows the world sees windmills. But he refuses to let the world’s vision be the final word. He has a different language. A different map. He has chosen to live in metaphor. And in doing so, he restores meaning to the mundane.

To choose the windmill is to choose purpose, even when that purpose makes you look insane. It is to live inside the story, not outside it. To see symbol where others see structure. To fight battles that matter—not because they are real, but because they are right.

And when the lance breaks, and you lie in the dirt, bruised and humiliated, something strange will happen.

Someone, somewhere, will decide to follow you.

IX. The Sacred Role of the Companion

What covers you discovers you.

-Don Quixote

Sancho Panza is no fool. He knows Quixote is mad. He knows the armor is junk and the horse is dying. He knows the lady they serve has never been a noblewoman. But he follows anyway. And that makes him more than a bystander. It makes him holy.

Sancho does not believe in the vision—but he believes in the man. And through that loyalty, he is transformed. He becomes more than a realist. He becomes a companion.

To follow someone who is mocked is to carry part of their burden. To walk beside someone the world calls deluded is to say: I will not leave you in your humiliation. I will not let you ride alone. This is not pity. This is allegiance. This is love.

There is sanctity in accompaniment. We are taught to lead, to build, to stand apart. But few are taught to follow with grace. To lend steadiness to a fragile vision. To be the witness that protects the dream from vanishing.

Sancho gives the fool dignity. Without him, Quixote would be alone—a madman yelling at clouds. But with him, he becomes a knight on a quest. The companion makes the story real.

There are many Quixotes in the world—people who dare to believe in the good, even if they look ridiculous. They will always be laughed at.

But they will endure—so long as there is a Sancho to walk beside them.

Here is Section X, the final section of Laughing at Don Quixote: Living for Sancho Panza.

X. Live for the Quest, Not the Applause

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!

-Don Quixote

The world will never applaud you for living with conviction. It will never reward you for chasing beauty, for defending the absurd, for speaking of virtue with a straight face. You will not be celebrated. You will be laughed at.

Do it anyway.

Live for the quest—not the audience. Put on the broken armor. Mount the starving horse. Raise the banner that no one else will carry. It does not matter if the cause seems small or foolish. The point is not victory. The point is to ride.

Let others call you cringe. Let them smirk from the sidelines. Let them whisper about your sincerity. The world belongs to the ones who move forward anyway. The ones who are willing to lose in the name of something better.

You will not always be understood. You will often be alone. But you will be alive in a way the cynics cannot touch. You will suffer, but your suffering will be radiant. You will fall, but your fall will echo with meaning.

And perhaps—just perhaps—someone will see you. Someone tired of irony. Someone aching for purpose. Someone who has been waiting for a banner worth following. And they will come to your side. They will steady the horse. They will carry the pack. They will be your Sancho.

We do not need more clever men. We need more holy fools. We need more broken knights.

Live for the thing no one sees. Fight the battle no one understands. And ride. Always, ride.