uncertainty does not rest easy...

I can write about love, separation, anger and cataclysm but writing about uncertainty is so elusive. Thoughts that form in my head and waft away before they crystallize! Is it that you lose touch with this feeling as you grow older or is it just something that I don’t want to unearth from the depths of my mind. Perhaps it was my life’s circumstances that prevented me from handling uncertainty well but the word itself threatens to disturb the tentative vestiges of peace within me.

Uncertainty presents itself in various circumstances in life. It begins with a first glimpse as an infant, when unsure of the next meal you cry, to the first crush, then waiting for innumerable successes & failures and finally uncertainty in shouldering the responsibility of one’s decisions. Each time we are faced with this emotion – we think “this is the worst it can get” but there are always surprises in store for us as we grow.

Out of all the various types of uncertainties of life finding a relationship stands out as the most significant of all. Many young persons have posed this question for me “am I going to meet someone this year?” The problem is there is no perfect answer. What if the tarots say yes? The next question will be – “will this person be ‘the one’?” If the tarots yet again answer yes, “will I marry him/her?” – Sure say the tarots – so then “will we be happy together?”... So on and so forth. Therefore even though we feel that we will be satisfied with the answer to whichever ‘will’ we are asking for, the truth is far from it. Knowing full well that we are in a vicious cycle, it still does not deter us from asking the question.

The tarots are there to help in coping with uncertainty, whenever it presents itself. A young person asked me, “Do you think there is anybody, who does not have someone for them?” The tarots don’t believe that some of us are born to be lonely. The cards are based on the karmic cycle of life from the Fool at birth to salvation with the World. The journey is incomplete without learning to negotiate relationships and find completeness within oneself, a lesson only learnt when you have loved and lost, only to love again. As a reader I have never met any person who does not have the hope for finding someone – perhaps only those who stop looking either because they tire of the search or they don’t need to anymore, choose not to be with someone. Then also it is a choice you make – therefore the anxiety about the uncertainty that I will not find someone suitable/compatible is baseless.

Let me illustrate this with several examples. Two men once came to me – they were friends and felt that a serious relationship was elusive and seemingly impossible for them. One of them was a very confident, handsome young man who was surprised that at age 34 he was still single. He told me that his friends accused him of being extremely snooty and vain about his dashing looks – “no one was good enough for him”. The cards surmised – the 6 of cups, the world, 5 of coins, the 4 of wands and the 9 of swords, followed by advice in the form of 2 of wands, the hierophant, strength, and temperance.

This is an aside, to my tarot reader friends. All cards should be read in a sequence and build a story related to the cards moving forward rather than looking backwards. Look for a holistic picture that a spread tells you rather than a piece-meal approach.

The story goes: he was far too stuck in the past and unable to embrace the future without letting go of conditioning from the past (6 of cups). The world signifies in this case a life overseas – which had resulted in him feeling uprooted and lost (5 of coins) and depressed (9 of swords) when he had shifted homes there (4 of wands). All in all, a rather traumatic shift to a foreign locale in the past! Further probing revealed that this in fact was true he had moved there when his parents separated and felt he had lost a part to himself then.

The advice was clear – the 2 of wands implying before you hurry into a pursuit wait – wait and look at what life is offering you, take stock of what you have and what you want, do not hurry into any action. The next card the hierophant teaches us a simple lesson – a need for finding missing parts to your own self. Once again all the cards are unanimous in their statement – you cannot have a meaningful relationship with anyone until you feel whole by your own self. This was followed by strength which simply put means control the demons of self loathing and excesses within you; give your self the quiet time to let the hierophant figure out who you are and what you want. The final card temperance says the same thing that healing would happen and options for relationships would reveal themselves to him.

The cards here teach us an important lesson, often what appear is not. A snobbish looking person maybe as troubled as a humble one and outward robustness often does not tell the inner tale a person experiences.

The second young man, a simple, suggestible and earnest looking soul had a different tale to tell. He had met many people and had a close relationship with a woman he really liked but was unable to commit to. Hence, he continued to look for love elsewhere. The cards reassured him in their own way. The first part told him that since he had already decided that he could not commit, he should treat it as a relationship concluded and stop distracting himself from moving on. The 5 of cups, the queen of swords, the ace of swords, 5 of wands and the 2 of cups; cards explained that the young man had experienced some grief (5 of cups) associated with the queen of swords, and he should slice this entanglement out of his life by the deciding ace of swords and hanging on to this relationship posed a distraction (5 of wands) which pulls him away from finding real intimacy elsewhere.

The cards next indicated that he would meet a queen of wands soon, someone he has known awhile (6 of cups) and that perhaps he will be able to form a relationship with a person who helps him feel secure (the temperance) and makes him feel stronger for himself (the emperor). That someone who will be the strength in his life, quite unlike the queen of swords with her slightly more fickle and self centered pursuits…

The cards helped both the persons cope with their uncertainty differently – in the first case, to understand that the feeling of uncertainty had become one with his self, due to earlier experiences while in the second case the uncertainty was induced by a relationship which had run its course but not as yet been expunged from life.

In most cases the cards indicate that uncertainty induces fear and hence the only way to cope with the fear is to name it, once you have identified the exact root cause of the fear, you will be able to find the necessary solutions and the fear of uncertainty will lose its hold on you.

It is so easy to dwell on the feeling when discussing others but yet my own inability to cope with panic every time I am faced with it is quite explicable. Through a gazillion experiences; waiting for a boyfriend to call, waiting to hear about an examination result, an unresolved fight with a spouse, an unexecuted decision, waiting to catch a flight… and many more, I have accepted that severe anxiety in coping with uncertainty is 2nd nature for a person like me. I don’t think that this is the time to analyze why I am that way or what has caused such a reaction, but to understand what the cards say to me. They have always told me to teach myself acceptance.

What if you are an anxiety prone individual who finds it harder than others to deal with uncertainty? Will beating yourself about it make it easier? Will it make the palpitations, the sweating and the purging lesser? Not at all! SO might as well accept that this is me, I really cannot punish myself for this, instead I will anticipate that I WILL have this reaction when faced with any uncertainty and hence will plan to deal with it.

For me, I have found my answer in a simple strategy – I work as hard as I can on anything that I am undertaking and then let it hang suspended in my brain for a while without punishing myself about anxiety that I experience too much. I know that after a period of rest my brain or the universe, whatever you wish to call it, will pop a solution that is the best for me and I will be able to make sense of the chaos. I am sure you have heard of it – it is called serendipity.