Monday, November 21, 2011

11/22/11—Living the Fairytale

Today's Draw: The Lovers from Twilight Realm a Tarot of Faery. Are you looking for a relationship that's "happily ever after"? Do you think "perfect love" exists? Do you believe there's someone out there that can complete you?

The Lover's card is about choice. Sometimes it's a choice between lovers. Other times it's a choice between love and something else. But it's usually about choice. 

In this particular Lovers card, however, they emphasize the consequences of the choices you make. The card depicts the story of Undine. This beautiful, young water nymph falls in love with a mortal man. In order to be with him, she gives up her nymphiness (nymphitude?) to be with him. 

At that point she starts aging like an actual woman and, a couple of years down the road when she's no longer "fresh", the lout has an affair on her because she's losing her looks. So she's returned to the sea as her LOOZER of a husband watches on unsympathetically from the shore, his pretty, young, NEW lover in his arms. 

Pig.

Okay, so maybe a little of my own baggage slipped into the telling of that story. But you get the point. Undine gives herself up for a different kind of love and ends up with regret. So the warning here is about not trying to be something you're not for another's love. But it's also about the dangers of leaving something that's perfectly fine for a taste of something new and different. 

On one hand, we can never know for sure what's perfect for us if we don't shop around a little. But on a deeper level, if we reach for something outside of us because we think it will make us happy or fill some empty space within us, then we're looking in the wrong place. Sometimes it's not the relationship we have with another that's lacking. Sometimes it's the relationship we have with ourselves. 

Undine was committed to another nymph when she found her mortal. But the mortal was shiny and different. In going for the shiny thing, she lost everything, including her identity...the very essence of her being. When you're willing to risk that much, it's not the romantic, fated, happily-ever-after kind of love you read about in fairy tales. It's a red flag that something is missing inside of you. And that "something" can be fixed only by you...and not by a knight on a white horse, a kiss from a prince or a wave of fairy godmother's wand. 

You should never have to change yourself to be with someone you love. Love should never make you feel "less than". Nor should it ever hurt. As imperfect and complicated as love is, it should nonetheless be a safe, soft and supported place to fall. If you find yourself in relationship after relationship that disappoints, abandons, hurts or kicks you from behind, it might be time to get real with what you believe love can and cannot do. It cannot "make" you anything. It can't make you happy. It can't make you whole. And it can't make you lovable. Those are all things you need to do for yourself. 

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