on movement, the death of things

We all know, us tarot readers, enthusiasts, what the Death card means. We know that it isn't necessarily, or even usually, about grandma or spouse pitching over dead when it shows up in a reading. No, it is death in a far more abstract kind of sense - the death of things, the withering away of the old, the tired. It is the end of things that are ready to be done. It is the stripping away, reaping the crop so that the earth may be sowed again with fresh seeds - reaping so as to stave away the rot.

We know this, we know. We know that things must end so that others may begin, that they must end because everything that begins also ends, eventually, and how boring would life be if things only ever stayed the same as always?

So many things we know will end before we even begin them - the trip with return flight scheduled, the relationship that is fun, but that you know deep down from the start is never going to be quite right.

We know too the metaphor of the Wheel, of cycles spinning around and around, of fortune swinging up and down. We know of wheels and spinning and death. Sometimes, when we are in the midst of something we love it can be bittersweet, this knowledge - that days are numbered, that all to soon this will become a mere memory, a shadow among many floating about in our minds. When our circumstances are terrible, in contrast, this knowledge serves as a hope, something to desperately clasp: yes, this is bad, yes this feels utterly unbearable but it too, will end, if we can only wait it out - it will end, like all things must.

Loss and death and ending can be frightening, painful...but is there anything more soul-shattering than the thing you fear will never be over, no matter how many times that wheel might spin, no matter how many other things might change, no matter how hard you might try?

They spin, those wheels and cogs, but are we moving with them or do we resist, clutch at things over and done? We long for things we can no longer have, comparing the now to the once was and feeling sad rather than trying to make the most of it; we stew on old resentments, slights and disasters, avoiding reasonable things because we insist on making sure that they never happen again, those wounds.

There is just so much energy, momentum around that spinning wheel...easier to move with it, wouldn't it be? Even when something deep inside us would like so very much to dwell in nostalgia...