Today's Draw: The Child from the Christmas Tarot by Corrine Kenner. Realistically speaking, what's your worst case scenario? What do you REALLY have to lose if you make a change? And what do you stand to lose if you don't?
The Christmas Tarot is a major's only deck. I purchased the file online and printed out the cards myself. This deck is now "out of print" in that you can no longer buy the files, but by next Christmas you'll be able to buy a full 78-card version wherever you buy tarot cards. Anyway, Corrine made this deck from images from Victorian cards and, as you can see from this one, the images she chose are tarotriffic, right down to the Fool's dog. That's who The Child is, by the way—The Fool in a normal tarot deck. He's called The Fool, not because he is stupid, but because he's innocent. He hasn't been taught to fear yet. He's not cognizant of loss. So he sets out on adventures with all the enthusiasm and blind faith of a child. He's the main character in the story of the tarot. And no matter how many times the tarot story is told, he always makes it out alive.
Remember when you were a kid? Assuming you didn't come from an abusive environment, there really wasn't much to fear. Yet all the same dangers existed in your world that exist today. It's not like the world was a better place. There was a senseless war going on. There were weapons of mass destruction constantly aimed at our cities. There was a recession. There were bad guys on every corner. It really wasn't much different 40-50 years ago. Maybe today's war isn't as draining on the country's energy. Maybe today's recession is more serious. Maybe we're in more of threat of chemical weapons than missiles. But the same "unknown" was there to fear.
Yet, when we were kids, we didn't carry that fear. Our parents could have ended up homeless. We could have ended up in a war torn world. But we didn't carry the fear. The unknown was just another place to explore.
So when did we start fearing? When we started having something to lose. An apartment. A job. Stuff. A relationship. A baby. And what have those fears accomplished? Well they keep us from making really stupid moves. And, um....hmmm....well....they um....
Exactly. They don't accomplish much. Except maybe making it hard for us to distinguish insecurity-born fear from danger-born fear. Fear is an *instinct* we have to keep us from being eaten by saber toothed tigers in the wild. And somehow it's become our most powerful *emotion* making us think and rethink everything 500 times before we move forward in our lives. Yet we somehow managed to survive the fearlessness of our youth...the jumping out of trees, the taking of all manner of drugs, the driving too fast, the falling in love over and over again...the acting without thinking.
It's not like the fear is what's keeping us safe. Being safe makes us safe. And the funny thing is that choosing "safe" over facing our fears usually lands us closer to our worst case scenario than facing our fears does. Part of that is because we're the world's worst "worst case scenario" assessors.
I've been doing a lot of readings lately for people who want to change careers or make change at work. While their fears tell them the worst case scenario is utter ruination and eating from trash cans, the realistic take is that the worst thing is usually that they'll have to get another job like the one they have now. Or they'll have to go on unemployment and get a roommate. So, people who are so miserable they're envisioning apocalyptic worst case scenarios are usually either living their worst case scenario or are just a step or two away from it. Certainly, spiritually speaking, they are already living it if they're living in a mindset of fear and defeat. And one worst case scenario we never consider when we're weighing options is how our lives will pan out if we DON'T take the risk...what our regrets will be, how we'll feel about ourselves, what our opportunities will be.
In essence, we approach fear in the same way the child approaches risk...we dive right into it without question of consequence. So the next time you can't move forward because you're frozen by fear, you gotta ask yourself, "who's the real Fool?" The person who unquestionably accepts fear and the status quo? Or the one who unquestionably accepts risk and adventure?
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