I have a tattoo on my right ring finger.
The tattoo is stick-and-poke line work of mountain peaks with an ambiguous orb hanging in the sky above—either the sun or the moon, I can never decide which. The tattoo is on my finger because, for me, tattoos are meant to be seen. They are talismans. Prayers. Lessons. My purpose in having a tattoo is that I be able to look at it and be reminded of something important, something necessary.
And my mountain range with its hovering orb is the lifelong reminder and lesson that I’m trying to learn, drawn out and inked on my body as a prayer.
This lesson can be written as two related phrases.
The first:
Wait and see.
And the second:
Respond, don’t react.
My mountain range (beautifully inked by Mariah Kegler) is meant to be a reminder that so many things take time. I am not meant to know everything in this moment. I am not meant to have all the answers. I am not meant to finish everything (anything?) now. I can only do my best and act as I can in the present moment.
I can only wait and see.
A mountain knows how to do this. A mountain knows what it means to wait and to let things grow and change over time. And yet this doesn’t stop the mountain from being a presence, does it? This doesn’t stop the mountain from changing the world. I think it’s just that for a mountain, there is no such thing as finished. There is no such thing as too late. This reminder never fails to give me a great deal of relief and courage.
There’s the reminder of perspective here, as well. The big picture has never come naturally to me. It is actually quite ridiculous sometimes how much I can miss because I only see the details and so rarely see the whole (There’s a reason I love working small!). The mountain is a reminder of all the things I might not be able to see until I climb to the highest point and look from a distance. From that highest mountain peak, do things make more sense? Do seemingly unrelated spaces, events, stories suddenly come together?
Just as importantly, a mountain also knows how to be in relationship. A mountain reminds me that nothing happens in isolation. I am never truly alone in my life. And just so, nothing I do or say or feel or think happens in isolation, either. There is always an element of call and response.
Think of mountains and think of echoes. We can only give so much. At some point, we need to pause and take a breath and wait for an answer. And that’s when, again, we are invited to respond. But respond in answer, not react instinctively without thought or feeling (or with only thought or only feeling).
Unsurprisingly, if I turn to the Tarot there is a card that can add to and deepen the meaning of this concept as well—the 8 of Wands. In this card, eight wands have been flung up into the air like javelins or arrows and are illustrated mid-flight. Classic interpretations of the card speak of movement, things set in motion, activities gaining momentum, desires and plans being made and articulated.
But if we take a mental step back and really look at this card, we start to notice things. We start to notice the frame. There’s no information on where the wands have come from, is there? And where will they land? We don’t know. The wands are in medias res. All we’re given is this snapshot of a moment in time, mid-flight, telling us that something is happening.
And, well, that’s this moment in time, isn’t it?
Who threw the wands? Was it us or someone pointing them toward us? And what if the wind changes? Or we move position? What if the landing is slippery or the distance is over or under estimated? What if clouds or a flash of sunlight obscure the landing? All of these elements are completely out of our control. All we can do is act in each moment and wait to see how the world responds.1
You might wonder where I’m going with all of this.
I guess what I’m saying is it’s OK to be slow. It’s OK to not have things figured out, to not know how to finish something, or even how to begin it. It’s OK if you feel stuck or unsure, or lost or frustrated by the world around you or by your inarticulate response to the world around you.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t have things figured out. But perhaps it is enough to remember again and again that nothing happens in isolation. And who knows what subterranean shifts might be occurring while I wait to see what happens next?
And maybe, years from now I’ll climb a mountain peak and be able to look down and see the meaning I didn’t know I was building today.
Some journaling questions:
How does a mountain answer a question?
Is there some call you are being invited to respond to right now?
Looking back through your life, what can you see now that you missed when you were stuck in the moment?
If you were a mountain, what sort of mountain would you be? Soft and rolling or tall and jagged?
What in your life needs a little bit of wait and see energy right now?
I owe gratitude to Jessica Dore and her book Tarot for Change for inspiring this more nuanced interpretation of the 8 of Wands.