Dear Lara: Learning To See Bob On Our 48th Birthday

Earlier this week for my 48th birthday, I gifted myself a Reiki session with Jillian at Oracle and Alchemy. (It is an awesome place, and you should go). Before the sesh, Jillian, whose effervescent wisdom shines through her eyes, had me draw a few cards for the year ahead.

I can't even believe the correlation between the two cards I drew, featured above. 

The tarot was the ten of swords, on the right. It features a dude (let's call him Bob) lying face down on the ground with ten swords stuck in his back. Nothing says "happy birthday" like Bob lying face down on the ground with ten swords stuck in his back, I know.

And yet, when I drew this card I lol'd. I draw this card often in my own personal tarot meanderings. When a card comes up again and again, it must be a thing, and perhaps its message is not being heard because it keeps on having to repeat itself.

In tarot, swords represent the element air, which represents activity of the mind. Says Rachel Pollack in Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom, "Just as air constantly moves, so the mind never rests, twisting and turning, sometimes violent, sometimes calm, but always moving."

I can very deeply relate to having the windy/racing mind Pollack describes, and yes, sometimes the onslaught of thought feels violent in the way it might paralyze me with indecision and confusion… in the same way wind, when it's gusty and fast, can feel aggressive and confrontational. 

The depiction of Air/Swords in the ten of swords at first glance is one of violence, but look a little closer and you will see, as Jillian pointed out, that the tips of the swords are not deeply submerged in Bob's body. Nor is their blood. So we must question, Has Bob actually been stabbed? Is he truly hurt? Must he lie on the ground like that as if he were dead, when clearly Bob can shake off those swords like the plastic props they appear to be?

"It only takes one sword to kill someone," Pollack writes. "The ten swords in [Bob's] body, even including one in his ear, suggest hysteria, and the adolescent attitude that 'no one has ever suffered so much as me', 'my life is over', and so on." 

So– a bit of theatrics, right? 

I don't think of myself as dramatic. Most people I know wouldn't characterize me that way, except for maybe my husband, who is familiar with all of the baggage I shove in the closets when people come over.

But I know myself to lean self-pitying within the confines of my own mind. I have so much to do. So many projects. So many expectations placed upon me by myself and others. I don't know where to begin or which project to work on. Woe is me, etc.

That's not to say that I have no reason to complain, or that I should write off the possibility of having some degree of ADHD because don't we all in this day and age? That's not to say that much of the duty I feel in this world and in this body is conditioned by my gender and by the rigorous flux of capitalism and that's not to say that I shouldn't be pissed about that. Don't you worry, I am!

But also, at this very moment, I know that I can only do one thing at a time. 

One. Thing. At. A. Time.

"Notice that…the sky clears in the distance, the black clouds give way to sunshine… the situation is not so bad as it looks," Pollack writes of the ten of swords.

Which brings me to the next card I drew, this one with another figure laying on the ground. But this one isn't Bob crying over his multi-colored Google calendar even as a glorious sunrise unfurls in the distance. This one depicts a resting fawn who, Jillian said, knows her mother will return. Her metaphorical mother. Which is life. A trust in life/God/source/love/what have you. A trust in the way life cares for her. This fawn knows with her resting body that life cares for her through nature. It provides a bed of flowers on which she can chill. She's chilling on a bed of flowers. The trees in the distance beyond her echo the swords in the tarot card, but they do not harm. Rather, they hold. 

So, is resting an antidote to feeling overwhelmed? Sure. But not when you're in the throes. If and when I have a lot to do, resting only makes me feel worse.

No, it's not just that I need to rest more. I mean yes, for sure, when the time is right. But the fawn has a softness. The fawn is showing us ease. Even if I will not or cannot rest, I can always return to taking a deep breath. Exhaling. One thing at a time. Even when I'm cooking five things at once while on the phone with my mom while doing laundry. I can always return to trusting my mother will return. And when I do that I can see my mother, a.k.a. trust in life. I see her in the still life around me: the giving reach of the leaves of my plants, the ever-present sky, my dog's sweet and adoring gaze, the way my heart keeps beating for me like a hopeless lover, living for me and only me, every second of every day.

And then, I can get more shit done. 

Happy birthday, Lar.