Today's Draw: The Empress from Marcia McCord's Tea Tarot. What kind make believe or pretend games did you play as a child? What did those fantasies reveal about what you wanted to be when you grew up? Are you living that dream?
For those keeping score, this may as well be the same card we got yesterday. Like yesterday's card, the Empress is usually pictured pregnant, nurturing the creation that's about to be born. Today's image is a bit different, though. It's a little girl having a tea party.
Back when we were small, we played pretend as a way of playing adult...like a dress rehearsal of sorts. We'd try a role on and see if we liked playing it. I wasn't much of a doll girl. But I had a ridiculous number of stuffed animals. I wasn't much into playing mommy, but I did enjoy playing veterinarian. And there was a time in my life that I did want to be a veterinarian.
What I didn't realize until now is that, while other girls were playing with dolls who were their babies, I was playing with stuffed pets who were my babies. That's what my dream family was and that's the family I have today.
I think I've told the story before about how, when I was 3 or 4, I had a "vision" or thought that I would grow up to be a writer living in Maine. Well, I'm a writer. And I may end up making it to Maine still. Who knows?
Our childhood holds the key to the life we dreamed of living. We may have interpreted it wrong—I thought I was meant to be a veterinarian and I'm glad I'm not one today. We may have dismissed it because we don't think we're big enough to live that dream. Or we may have veered off course a little. Then again, maybe we're living it.
I tend to believe there are no mistakes in life. We are where we are because we need to be. But maybe it's time to look back at those dreams and make believes and ask ourselves if there's still a part of us that wants that dream. Maybe just dig around a little and see what that little girl or boy thought being a grown up meant, whether it meant being a mommy or a doctor or garbageman.
(I have a brother who, through a childhood trauma involving his discarded bottle or bott bott, dreamed of growing up to become a garbage man, because, I presume, he felt they had all the power and got all the good stuff. Either that or he wanted to bring down the entire garbageman empire from the inside as some sort of revenge for them driving off with his bott bott.)
Anyway, the point is, are you living your dream? You may discover you are. You may discover your childhood dreams don't resonate with you as an adult. Or you may discover there's something you may end up regretting not reaching for. Thing is, you have to become conscious—you have to ask yourself these questions—before you can make moves to get it. Because it would totally stink if you didn't do a review until the very last minutes of your life and only then realize what you missed.
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