i never really pictured a life after 21, when i was a teenager, and so every year since then has been something of a surprise. i turned 31 a couple years ago, and being a decade older than i ever imagined kind of fucked with me. it’s a thought that i haven’t been able to shake; it’s always lurking in the back of my brain.
the future now feels opaque, at best. people talk about what they will do when they’re old, how they will be, and i can’t picture it for myself.
admittedly, i am a little terrified of aging. i have already found it difficult to live in a body, and i don’t think it’s going to get any easier (though i’d love to be surprised on that front).
so the old man as fool in this deck put me off of buying it for a while, even though it’s a card that takes joy in age. it forces me to think about aging, and what an aging body looks like. when i drew it today, i wasn’t excited to write about it, just resigned.
so i pulled all my books together and decided to write about my fears. the fool is one of those easy cards for me, whose meaning never escapes me. it’s about starting journeys, it’s about innocence, it’s about taking that first step even when you don’t know what comes next. there are a lot of things i could have written about, and might have if i had used a different deck, but i couldn’t get past the image of the cheerful old man.
the last sentence of the fool’s entry in the guide for the mesquite tarot struck me: “may you step into the beautiful unknown without fear.”
every morning we wake to that unknown, even if we have our lives planned out. i don’t pretend i’m always without fear about the future, but i am trying to take joy in the present. this week, darlings, let’s try to be fearless. let’s try to be brave.
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this week’s deck: sasuraibito tarot