Judgement

First things first: I’m the realest. Second thing: I got my tarot deck last week and I’ve been trying to pull a card every day and asking myself, what can I take out of this card that I may need to succeed in my day?

(Note: I use the absolutely beautiful Wild Unknown deck. If you’re not about tarot, no big deal! I generally don’t see much fortunetelling or anything in it; it’s almost like a guided meditation.)

This morning, after a light shuffle of the deck, I spread the cards out haphazardly and chose with my eyes closed, picking based on a feeling I really do sense in my gut.

Judgement. I don’t know the cards all that well yet, so I still rely on the handbook that came with them. I needed to be aware of who and what I was judging today, and also focus on forgiveness. Knowing that tarot generally asks you to look inward, I knew it would likely be some sort of personal forgiveness. Great- this sounds like a recipe for a fine day.

Skip through traffic and hating every single other car on the road – probably a place I could have exercised forgiveness – and all the way through work and to tonight’s ballet class.

Yes, dear readers, this post combines tarot and ballet. A twofer!

I have been doing ballet for about three months, once or twice a week. In a prior life, when I was young and spry, I was a gymnast, but I’m now in my late 20s with arthritis in an ankle and have been focusing on weights as my primary source of fitness. I also have no real dance experience. But more details on my adventures as an adult ballet beginner will come in another post at another time.

I am also a bit of a perfectionist, so leave it to me to find the hobbies where you can never truly attain perfection. I pick asymptote hobbies. (See? I did learn something from calculus.)

Though ballet is often a joyful experience for me, today it seemed to be anything but. I felt stiff, slow, and I probably wasn’t giving myself enough credit for what I was able to accomplish. My turns were sloppy, I couldn’t feel the music, my arms were like jello. (Whether the latter had to do with the pull ups and push presses I did yesterday is uncertain.)

It’s sometimes hard to see improvement as an individual, and I was very frustrated with my performance. I didn’t have the joy. I felt awful, and I feel even worse that I couldn’t hide how awful I felt. Today I likely did need that dose of forgiveness for myself.

But tomorrow is another day, and another chance to practice personal forgiveness, and another opportunity to find joy.

Find joy in this photo of one of my cats: