The Card of the Day is the Priestess

The card of the day is the Priestess. It's delivered via an Android widget that automatically refreshes at midnight, forecasting new fresh hell as I stare at my phone, scrolling into the wee hours through posts I've read or ignored several times already, willing myself to put the fucking thing down and go the fuck to sleep. But sleep brings dreams, and dreams bring contemplation, and contemplation holds very. difficult. questions.

I've outsourced my divinatory practice to an algorithm. At the time, installing the widget seemed a way to inject a bit of sacred into the mundane, to brand this object, this mental tether that I carry with me everywhere, something Other. Something Powerful. I would be That Person, whose spiritual practice touched everything, who found connection to deeper wisdom in unlikely places.

(Spoiler alert: the phone had enough power on its own. I didn't need to feed it more.)

What's happened, instead, is that my physical cards lie neglected, appearing only when a chime, ring or ding alerts me to someone else's needs. Clarity. Insight. Perspective. They ask; I deliver. Maybe. I use words like perseverance and honesty and faith and community. I try to hug them, through the phone, to pour out my conviction that life, even when difficult and messy, wrapped up in egos and dominated by our shadows, is beautiful, and important, and that we owe it to that beauty to brush off the dust and bring our best selves and try again tomorrow.

And I tell them that I love them and I hang up the phone and I put away the cards and I scroll.

(This wasn't meant to be a meditation on the horrors of technology.)

I am aware that my mind is not playing nice, right now. I am aware that my feelings are out sync with reality and that the list of things piling up is angling towards a 5 of Swords Tower scenario, and that my life would be better if I could stop having feelings and just do the work brush off the dust and try again tomorrow.

Why is it so hard to human? A friend asked me recently. I empathize but have no answer. Fifteen times a day, I think or mumble or cry: I don't know how to do any of this. And respond to myself, with my teeth clenched. "It's fine. Just do everything." This isn't an "embrace the world of new experiences" do anything. It's a "this group project is due tomorrow and no one's answering my emails" do everything.  As if that were a solution. As if accounting for everyone's needs would quiet the noise and bring me the peace I pretend I'm after.

The card of the day is the Priestess.

Lately I can't take an action without a posse of people telling me it's the right thing. (This is inconvenient, as I have very few friends). Suspicion is not enough for me. Feeling is not enough for me. I can't possibly act because I think something might be a good idea. I can only act if I know with utter certainty, if I have deconstructed every possible outcome and diagrammed every implication. And if I am not certain, I do not act. In lieu of action, I scroll. I toggle between browser tabs or between social media apps and feel myself disintegrating.

The Priestess feels, believes. She uses words like  perseverance and honesty and faith and community. She doesn't require a peer-reviewed double-blind study to help her decide whether it's OK to say "good morning" to a coworker. That doesn't mean she's never wrong. But little about my current approach is right.

All this time I have been thinking that "trust your intuition" and "listen to your gut" and "follow your heart" were somehow purported to increase your accuracy. Which seemed like a load of shit to me, honestly. I am wrong all the time, and you can't tell me that by suddenly forcing myself to believe that I am not wrong that I'll suddenly stop being wrong. See: all of human history.

But what if existing in a bubble of trancey certitude just makes your life suck less? What if "follow your intuition" makes the last 30 seconds of your life better? If I didn't see the bus because I was writing an email about how pissed off I was and you didn't see the bus because you were listening to your inner voice, which one of us went out happier?

(Please don't tell me that constructing a false confidence in my own intuition for the purposes of feeling less shitty is against the spirit of the card. I will scream.)

I've always thought that people with too much absolute confidence in their own perceptions were assholes. And, to be fair, they are. But hanging back and respecting people's boundaries from 15 feet away also appears to not be a winning interpersonal strategy.

And the bus is coming, anyway, sooner or later. The Priestess, at least, does not seem concerned.