YouandTheTarot

Memoirs are supposed to be a public service, right.  The lessons learned and the inspiration imparted are positioned and packaged to help the rest of us with whatever: lousy childhood, financial ruin, chronic disease or, as in Melinda French Gates' "The Next Day"  the continuum of transitions.  In the volatile, technology-driven, value-shifting 2025 there are certainly lots of those transitions. The current emotional undercurrent is: Please, not one more change, not right now.  For Gates, the transitions included adjusting to college as one of the few female computer science majors, parenthood, death of a best friend, the end of a marriage and veering away from a career path managing a philanthropic foundation. The slim volume (153 pages of actual content) is having brisk sales. On Amazon, the ranking is 7287.  But the reviews, such as this one from the Standard , aren't strong.  One complaint is the sin of omission.  Gates, for example, doesn't discus...

  At the end of their coping power. That's what so many clients for tarot readings tell me. It isn't just employment insecurity. Battling with the AI Assistant to get to a human. Or not being able to afford to purchase a single-family house.  Actually, it's the old adage: The broken shoe lace, not something big. That's the  tipping point to drive someone over the edge. One of those broken shoe laces is having to shop in Walmart. Inflation has made that a necessity. Recently it's becoming more and more of a frustration to get the shopping done in Walmart. To check out what my clients have been complaining about I went over to Walmart on Glendale in Toledo, Ohio. Well, clients were not exaggerating. The house brand of facial cleanser - price $3.26 - was locked in a case. That made no sense since expensive cosmetics with brandnames such as Loreal in nearby aisles weren't locked up. I had to cruise around to find an associate to request an unlock. Guess what? One as...

 In the Tarot the most misunderstood card it the Death one. B-movies feature it in a crime scene.  Actually, it symbolizes that change - the big kind - is on the way. It may be good or it may be bad. In conducting my tarot readings I am bearing witness to AI in customer service as both positive and the source of raged-filled frustration.  A welcome change: You want to pay off your bill to the insurance company or the electric utility. By pressing a link or a number on the automated phone script you can do that without any human intervention. You can use a card or have payment deducted from your banking account. This option is 24/7. Conduct transactions beyond normal business hours. Not so welcome is having to scream over and over again at the AI Assistant: Representative or Advocate. Getting through the automated prompts can manifest itself as being trapped in the kind of nightmare narrative Franz Kafka created. During the process you have to endure listening to promoti...

  During a bad time for the Allies in WWII, GIs were taken prisoners by the Germans. As they were forced marched a German woman in a farm house showed compassion for the troops: She tried to bring them water. The enemy wouldn't allow that. But it was the act of compassion which lifted the spirits of the GIs. They held on, kept marching - and lived. Yesterday at the First Unitarian Church in Toledo, Ohio, Joe Moran told that story. The point was this: Compassion in itself can make a difference. For example, the suffering can be inspired to reach into their own resources.  To regain hope.  And, no, you don't have to fix the situation. Just show you understand the pain.  Actually, what I'm observing in tarot-reading sessions is that the fixers of others tend to be ducking looking at what should be fixed in themselves.  Needing plenty of compassion these days - but not getting much of that - are members of Generation Z. They are struggling to obtain and to hold on ...

Maybe it was a spillover from WWII when there were absolute values. The Nazi were bad. Sacrifices were necessary to support the military. Pray for the US troops.  We Boomers ran with all that, making all the moves authority figures such as high school guidance teachers hammered were the only ways to proceed forward. And forward we went, the luckiest generation in America Now, we are not so sure. Neither are the clients for tarot-reading sessions with me.  Increasingly they ask me about right and wrong.  Essentially, they come to me for "permission" how to live their lives with other human beings, be it a romantic partner, a boss or a competitor. They are human beings without a code of absolutes to turn to.  Predictably then, there is no collective mourning for the mother, wife and productive executive - Wesley LePatner - who was murdered in the Midtown Manhattan massacre. There was, though, when father, husband and US President - John F. Kennedy - was murdered. A nat...

  "Am I right?" That's what a client for a tarot reading pleaded to know. They were experiencing a relationship meltdown and needed feedback if balking about the partner's long hours at the gym was a legit grip. Well, as we honor diversity of thought  - that is that myriad points of view have merit - I had to back up and say: There's no absolute right or wrong.  With that out of the way, I had to give them confidence to assert their point of view about what should take place and not take place in an intimate relationship. In this context the point of view was that the spouse: Should be spending more time with the family, not chasing extreme fitness in middle age. Needed to add to the household income by picking up gigs in addition to the full-time job. Could be taking online courses to upskill. Of course, the husband probably had another point of view. But since I wasn't conducting a marriage counseling session he wasn't there to present it. Rubber meets t...