02/26/19
#soultarotchallenge Day 26: A card that I’m being invited to embody some aspect of. Or another way to think about it is, what card am I gunna get a tattoo of today? You know what comes up? 5 OF S-WORDS Ugh! This is quite possibly my least favorite card in the deck. I had a literal visceral reactions pulling this today. I don’t want to embody anyone in this card. I hate the stupid, smarmy sword hoarding victor person and the sad loser quitter people. Everyone in this card sux except for maybe the clouds which are pretty metal. Still, I don’t want to get a tattoo of any of it, which fortunately I don’t have enough hands to film me giving myself a tattoo so I dodged that S-WORD. I was just about to quit the #tarot all together being stuck on the traditional meaning of this card as being about false victory and failure. However I got rescued by some bad-ass insight by @oliviapepper who really shifted my thinking around this card referencing survivors guilt.
I’ve talked a little bit about getting sober over that past few posts, which is perhaps the most important single decision I’ve ever made. However, there is a lot of sadness that I hold around the people I’m close to who have passed away from drugs and alcohol. I also have a lot a feeling about people I care for who are still engaged in self harming behaviors. However, I don’t want to be that asshole with all the swords that everyone is walking away from because he sucks. What good is it to have your dreams actualized if its at a detriment to others or it isolates and alienates you? it’s also hard to feel like you got a gift that others never got the chance to receive. And this maybe touches on the guilt of being a straight white man, which is definitely something that I drank over. There was this deep shame that I felt because I was born into a privileged body that I never asked for, that gave me advantages that I never wanted. I felt that it wasn’t fair at all and I tried to erode that privilege through self harming. What I’ve learned since then is that trying to drink your advantage away does nothing for people who don’t have the same privileges, it just creates a drain on your community.
This brings me to the other guidance I got around this card from @spirit.speak who saw it as knowing where your responsibility lies in relationships and knowing where you are powerless. I don’t have the power to shift myself out of a position of privilege unless I die, if that happens it harms those around me and does nothing to help everyone who has less power then me. However, if I can accept the unacceptable around this shitty system we are existing in, perhaps I can use my power to do some good in the world. Instead of trying to escape something that I can’t run from or change, something I have no power over, maybe I can learn ways to show up for those who could benefit form my help and maybe I could learn to be of service in the world. Maybe I can use the lessons I learned from my wounds and provide some healing to those around me. Perhaps I can take these S-Words I found laying around on the beach, recycle them and use the money to contribute to any number of groups who have been marginalized and threatened by the disastrous system we live in. I definitely don’t have the answer but if I’m going to embody an aspect of this card I’d like to be a cloud or the sea or something that is showing up to do their part and not just perpetuating the same busted illusion of winning and losing that has brought us to this bleak place in history.