I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Friday Flash, I share an epiphany or aha moment from the past week.
In the hopes of finding some inspiration for today’s blog post, I drew Tarot cards. The one that interested me the most in the three-card spread was The Fool, drawn in the “what lies beneath” position. “What lies beneath” indicates something that the querent (person asking the Tarot for guidance) isn’t consciously aware of, but that is influencing outcomes.
The Fool Tarot card symbolizes new beginnings, taking chances, and embracing the unknown with optimism and a sense of adventure. The Rider-Waite version of the card shows a young person at the outset of a journey, standing on a cliff’s edge, with a happy dog as their companion.
ChatGPT proposed that, in this morning’s reading, The Fool suggests I need to let go of what doesn’t serve me anymore, particularly over-identification with my past family roles. It’s time to leap into a new version of myself.
In her book Tarot for Change, author and Tarot reader Jessica Dore tells a story of ice dancers in her section about The Fool:
There’s an old story from the Seneca, Indigenous people of the central and western region of what is now called New York State, in which a witch throws a group of men into an ice house in hopes that they’ll die inside. But… the men don’t die, because the protagonist in the tale gives the other men this warning: whatever you do, don’t sit down on the ice chairs.
So the men dance and sing instead of sitting down, and with the heat that their bodies generate, the hard walls of the ice house start to melt. A patch of sky pokes through the ice house ceiling. Eventually, the sun appears, and with it, the possibility of living to see another day.
Dore relates this to how we can become frozen by acting according to rules:
In the study of how people behave, rule-governed behavior is a term for action that’s taken not because it is the best or right thing to do in a given situation but because a person has begun to do it automatically based on things like social reinforcement, avoidance of discomfort, or a need to feel good all the time.
Rules help us create structure in our lives. But sometimes rules, when followed without question, become like ice houses that trap and freeze us. Inside for too long, we get numb to the naturally occurring contingencies of life that demand flexibility. We’re in the ice house any time we say, “This is how it’s done, this is how it’s always been done, and never mind the fact that it’s hurtful, life limiting, and oppressive, or simply doesn’t work anymore.” …
Change at any level—the personal, relational, cultural, systemic—requires two things: that we be courageous enough to dance weirdly in the frozen spaces and that we be willing to feel whatever angst or uncertainty that brings. I want to give a charm here for any aspiring fools and hopeful walkers of the weird-rule-breaking way: The job of rules is to manage; they serve a function of control. In a community, rules control the social climate. In an individual, rules control the internal environment, which includes thoughts, feelings, and sensations. So when you break a rule, expect to be met by a wild chorus of thoughts, feelings, and sensations that the ice house walls were doing a great job of keeping out. Know this when you start dancing, and you’ll be better equipped for what comes next.
I haven’t, in the past, thought of my expectations for myself around how I relate to my family as rules. But I can see that I do have rules in my head:
- If I’m available, I must handle driving responsibilities including airport transfers and transportation to dinners out and other group events.
- If I am of the oldest generation at a family meal out, I must pay for it in its entirety.
- I must not communicate any expectations or even preferences onto my children for how they behave towards me.
- I should participate in all family holiday events if at all possible.
- I must own a large house with multiple guest rooms so that my children can stay here when they are in town, and so that in the future, I can host any grandchildren.
Is it time to start relaxing those rules? It’s definitely time to start questioning them.
In Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, Rachel Pollack writes of the leap of The Fool:
Imagine yourself entering a strange landscape. A world of magicians, of people hanging upside down, and of dancers in the bright air. You can enter through a leap from a height, through a dark cave, a labyrinth, or even by climbing down a rabbit hole chasing a Victorian rabbit with a pocket watch. Whichever way you choose, you are a fool to do it. Why look into the deep world of the mind when you can stay safely in the ordinary landscape of job, home and family? Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, warned his readers not to take even a step outside the ordinary path laid out for you by society. You might not get back again.
And yet, for those willing to take the chance, the leap can bring joy, adventure, and finally, for those with the courage to keep going when the wonderland becomes more fearsome than joyous, the leap can bring knowledge, peace, and liberation.
Actually, I have already taken a couple of leaps. When my job as a data science leader became untenable in 2024, I left it, and didn’t look for a new corporate position in technology. Instead, I completed a 365-day reinvention blogging project and threw myself into my abstract art practice, entering art into shows and joining in-person art groups.
When my daughter and mother moved out of my house, I returned to the online dating fray. To my surprise, I almost immediately met someone with whom I have a very strong connection. But it was a leap to give myself over it, because I had rules about who was appropriate for me, and he didn’t meet them.
In my art, I’ve started a project that’s a leap: Things Men Gave Me, in which I’m pairing memoir-style personal essays with abstract art inspired by the true stories I’m sharing.
Pollack writes of another reading of The Fool:
[The] Rider pack shows the Fool as conceived by Oswald Wirth. An older tradition than that of Waite, it pictures the archetype as a grotesque wanderer. This image has been interpreted variously as the soul before enlightenment, a newborn child entering the world of experience and the principle of anarchy. Elizabeth Haich has provided an interesting interpretation of Wirth’s grotesque image of the Fool Placing him between Judgement and the World, she describes the Fool as what the outside world sees when it looks upon someone who is truly enlightened. Because the Fool does not follow their rules or share their weaknesses, he appears to them in this ugly distorted way. Haich describes the Fool’s face as a mask, put there not by himself but by the outside world. The last card, the World, presents the same enlightened person, but viewed from inside, that is, by himself.
This is really the risk if I were to take the leap of relaxing or eliminating the rules I live by with respect to my family: that I will be seen as grotesque, that I will perceive myself as grotesque and other people will too. It is grotesque for a woman to prioritize herself over her children or grandchildren, isn’t it?
There is something grotesque in my TMGM project as well. Sharing unflattering stories about myself and about other people (the men who gave me things) could be grotesque. To make the stories I tell compelling, realistic, and enlightening I must show myself to be a flawed human being; I must be entirely honest about the mistakes I made and the bad things I did. This will be grotesque or it’s almost not worth doing.