The Hanged Man

Lingonberry muffins. I don’t have access to lingon here in the U.S., but I thought I might use canned lingonberries for muffins, and the recipe turned out good enough. If you want to make them and like your muffins on the sweeter side, I suggest adding a couple of tablespoons of sugar.

I mixed 2 cups flour with 3 teaspoons baking powder and ½ teaspoon salt in a bowl. In another bowl I mixed one egg, 1 cup milk, and two tablespoons melted and cooled butter. I poured the wet ingredients into a well in the dry, stirring lightly. Then I added 1 cup of Felix lingonberries. I baked them (12) in 420F for about 25 minutes.

Last week, I was given a tarot reading as a “reward” for an online book review I’d written some time ago. Although I’m pretty familiar with the tarot deck and the meaning of the different cards, I’d never before had a professional reading. It was more exciting than I’d expected it to be, and I thought about it for quite some time afterwards.

One of the cards that came up in the spread was the Hanged Man.

The Hanged Man in tarot can indicate a lot: A temporary pause in life, a need for patience, uncertainty, deep thought, and meditation for instance.

But the Hanged Man also invites you to look at things from another perspective (in his own case this perspective is upside down). So I decided to look at some things in a new or at least different way.

Maybe we all have areas in life in which we tend to get stuck for some reason or other. Perhaps because we secretly like it that way, or maybe because we’re too lazy to change or we might not even realize we’re stuck until we get unstuck by accident (or luck).

My sticking points are some undesirable patterns in my relationships with my son (the screaming duels I get lured into when he refuses to do his homework), my husband (when I become a sarcastic nag because he leaves the kitchen in a mess), and, most importantly I think, the relationship I have with myself.

I don’t know if it’s possible to get a view of one’s self that’s not skewed. I can feel myself swinging like a pendulum from one extreme (thinking I’m actually very good at something) to another (believing myself to be completely and incurably stupid). Rarely do I think of myself in an even, lukewarm way. Most of the time, I am actually quite mean to myself, and when confronting a mirror the words I say to myself would definitely be filed as verbal abuse if hurled to another person.

And I don’t think I’m alone. I think we often tend to be overly harsh with ourselves.

Isn’t it time that we cut ourselves some slack? I don’t mean kicking up our legs with a glass of wine because “we deserve it”, I mean being proud of what we’ve accomplished. Last night my son did a drawing of a castle, and he was so openly and unabashedly proud of it. It was a good drawing and I told him so.

“You should be very proud of yourself,” I said. “You worked very hard on that drawing. Look how many different colors you used and see all those little details.”

I wonder at what point we’re considered too old for that sort of encouragement. Because it stops at some point, doesn’t it? Suddenly we’re deemed too adult to need it. Or we get paid, and that payment is the encouragement. But however nice and welcome money is, it’s not the same as a pat on the back along with a few words.

I think therefore that it’s important that we give this kind of encouragement to ourselves. We all have gifts and talents that we’re using on a daily basis. And I suspect we are aware of them, even though we might be too embarrassed to admit it.

So here it is, the advice of the Hanged Man this Friday: Be proud of your accomplishments, of all the things you’ve done! Don’t be so quick to see what’s “wrong” with you and rush out to “fix it”, embrace the good stuff. There’s plenty if you look for it, sometimes you just have to shift your perspective a little bit. Have a great weekend everybody and see you again on Monday.

The Hanged Man from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, invites you to look at things from another perspective.