Words to Live By

...and everyone's favorite card.

I recently read a quote that really struck me.

It was in a book about running — I’ve been reading a lot of those lately — but its wisdom applies to pretty much anything.

“Poetry, music, forests, oceans, solitude — they were what developed enormous spiritual strength. I came to realize that spirit, as much or more than physical conditioning, had to be stored up before a race.”

— Herb Elliott, Olympic Champion and legendary runner

It can be easy to get caught up in chasing tangible, measurable progress — the adult equivalent of gold stars. The to-do list. The inbox. The mileage. The chores. The seemingly endless maintenance of being human.

Intellectually, we may understand that rest is essential. That leisure is restorative. That recreation is vital to our well-being. In practice, it’s often another story.

I am not them. I would like to be them.

To that end, I’ve rounded up some words that have spoken to me in recent days — about rest and change and art and life — in the event they might resonate with you, too.

“Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure… and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.”
— Maya Angelou

“We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases.”
— Haruki Murakami

“I do not know much. But there are certain advantages in the not knowing. Like virgin territory, the mind is free of preconceptions. Everything I do not know forms the greater part of me: This is my largesse. And with this I understand everything. The things I do not know constitute my truth.”
— Clarice Lispector

“The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.”
— Victor Hugo

“The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.”
— Tennessee Williams

“He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.”
— Benjamin Franklin

“What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”
— T.S. Eliot

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard… Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. Throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair… That’s why you must walk so lightly. On tiptoes and no luggage, completely unencumbered.”
— Aldous Huxley

“Happiness… not in another place, but this place, not for another hour, but this hour.”
— Walt Whitman

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh

In the meantime, I’ll be doing my best to fill the well — reading this novel, filling some pages, remembering that spirit is essential to strength.

Until next week… x

Card of the Week

Here is this week’s card for the collective, as well as some thoughts to carry into the days ahead. As most modern readers will tell you, the tarot is not about fortunetelling, nor is it about neat, definitive answers. The cards are simply one path to reflection, a way of better knowing ourselves and others through universal themes. If this reading resonates with you, great! And if not, no worries. Take whatever may be helpful and leave the rest.

Featuring The Tarot of Leonora Carrington

Everyone loves The Star. It’s a very unofficial survey, but I’ve spied more Star-inspired tattoos adorning Brooklyn limbs than any other tarot figure.

The Star is the exhale when you didn’t even notice you were holding your breath. It’s the moment when the yoga teacher says, “close your eyes and relax your forehead, drop your shoulders away from your ears, unclench your jaw…” and you discover that indeed, you’ve been living life as one big knot. And now you feel so much better.

In a tarot deck, The Star appears immediately after The Tower — a card that would have us burn our existing systems to the ground in favor of starting over again. The Star speaks to what comes next — healing, renewal, building anew.

We’d like to think it’s easy to move from one step to another — from idea to inception, from hurt to healed, from one project right on to the next. But life is rarely so linear.

The Star speaks to the time in between — after an ending, but before the new beginning. It’s sort of a creative no-man’s-land, an emotional hiatus, a necessary sabbatical, planned or otherwise. No matter how brief (or protracted) our stay, The Star teaches us that visiting is nonnegotiable.

It’s easy to confuse this time with the new beginning itself. Or to skip over it entirely, headed directly for whatever comes next. But The Star recommends — insists, really — that we give ourselves a moment to find our bearings. To regroup, process, and catch our breath.

In a literal sense, this card may be regarded as the North Star, an unwavering source of hope and guidance, a constant in a shifting world. It asks us to dig deep but walk lightly. To chase meaning but consider our footsteps. What are we putting out in the world… and what are we leaving behind? The Star wants us to feel good about the answers.

‘Legacy’ is often regarded as a big, scary word that leads to the pondering of mortality and eternity. But really, in the best sense, a legacy is more like a gift — the ripples that linger in the wake of our words and actions.

Whenever I pull The Star, I’m reminded of two important tarot legacies.

The first is that of Pamela Colman Smith, illustrator of what is arguably the most recognizable, if not the most iconic, tarot deck — the Rider-Waite-Smith, so named as it was distributed by Rider, commissioned by Waite, and drawn by Smith. Published in 1909 to little fanfare, it has endured as the most popular deck of all time. At this moment, there are over one hundred million copies in circulation around the world.

No one knows exactly how Smith felt about this massive undertaking. Was she filled with divine inspiration? What were her favorite images to create? Had she any inkling of the lasting impact this work would have?

The only direct quote we have on the matter is one line she included in a letter to photographer Alfred Steiglitz: “I have just finished a big job for very little cash!”

Modern freelancers take note: We aren’t always aware of the legacy our work may leave. But (in addition to negotiating a fair rate) it is a worthy consideration.

The version of The Star pictured above is a reproduction of a painting by feminist surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, who produced her own renderings of the entire Major Arcana.

She once said, “To possess a telescope without its other essential half — the microscope — seems to me a symbol of the darkest incomprehension.”

In a nutshell, this is the lesson of The Star.

You cannot consider the macro without the micro. You cannot measure progress based on outer metrics alone. Movement and stillness are complementary — and sometimes synonymous.

When I see The Star, I think of Leonora Carrington and Pamela Colman Smith and countless others whose ripples continue to grace us with their versions of beauty and truth. May we honor their legacies as we step into our own.

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