11/8/11—Making What You Want Out Of Life

Today's Draw: The Seven of Coins from the Dracula Tarot. How do you view the ups and downs of life? Do you label them as good or bad? Or are they all part of the rich mosaic of life?

Traditionally the Seven of Coins is about reward and recognition. Hooray! But not in this deck. In this deck it's about taking a hard blow or the failure of a project.

We have a tendency to categorize events in our lives as good or bad. Positive or negative. But the option to do that is entirely up to us. Like the Buddhists, we can choose to see everything as just simply "being". No judgment of good and bad. Everything just "is". We can also choose to see everything like the Negative Nellies—that all of life's triumphs just mean something bad is about to happen. Or we can choose to see things like the Tierneys (haha)—that everything holds the seed of something positive. 

When I look back on my life, a lot of "bad" things happened to me. But there wasn't one of them that didn't turn into something good and of value in my life. There wasn't one of them I didn't need in order to be where I am today. And I like being where I am today. 

Sure, difficult things still suck in the moment. But I'm pretty quick to look for the lesson in the situation or to find the silver lining. Because there's always one there. And I would go so far as to say "bad" things are actually gifts we haven't formed the patience to view as such yet. Because they always turn to good in time. 

The older I get and the further I travel along my path, the more I seem to see how our thoughts and emotions shape our reality. For those whose motto is "life sucks and then you die," that's probably how things are going to pan out. And for those who believe life is beautiful, that's what they'll get. And, according to studies about the link between happiness and longevity, the "life is beautiful" people will also get a few extra years of life to enjoy. 

So just like the Seven of Coins has different meanings depending on how you interpret it, so does life. It really is what you make of it.