information – The Hermits' Rest

List the people you admire and look to for advice…

Okay, I’m not going to list everyone I admire! Some of them do t want to be blogged about, anyway. And advice? An organization I used to work for had a catchphrase something like, “Offer information, don’t give advice.” I rarely ask for advice these days. But I appreciate information from trusted sources.

That said, I have always found doing tarot card readings to be a way of providing information and perspectives without giving advice. You get some ideas from archetypal images and let the person you’re reading for draw their own conclusions. Ideally.

Celtic cross with significator, using Babylonian Tarot.

I hadn’t been reading cards much. The reading above was years ago in a previous post. Since 2018, I haven’t really wanted any insights into things around me, sort of feeling like ignorance may be bliss. But I’ll read if asked.

So today I was asked. I then realized my favorite Robin Wood deck was hiding somewhere in my Austin house stuff. And I was feeling rusty, especially since the only deck I could find that wasn’t overly cutesy was one with alternative names for suits, and worse, had labels on the cards giving them meanings I didn’t necessarily want to hear.

This cheerful card did come up. The good news is no one can stab you any more. They’re out of swords.

However, the reading went fine. Like riding a bicycle, it all comes back. I just love looking at what is laid out and seeing a gestalt of what the cards are hinting at before looking at details. That is FUN. And helping people with problems look at things from a new perspective is rewarding. (Plus I got to talk to an old friend.)

Maybe if I locate one of the decks I’m more comfortable with, I’ll do more, just not for me or my family. I have a friend who’s a professional tarot reader who doesn’t do family readings.

(I’m sure somewhere in this blog I talk more about out tarot and how I use it, so in a few words, no I don’t predict the future and no it’s not a parlor trick. It’s intuition and archetypes.)

I’m glad I was home and able to spontain a tarot reading, since not much else happened today. More rain and wetness! 100% humidity means I had big hair. I did get to see a big ole jackrabbit, which is pretty rare here, and continued to get the buntings more comfortable with me. I enjoy both the painted and indigo ones singing and flitting around.

You can practically tell that this is a bird! They’re getting closer!

I hope you have trustworthy advisors, but even more, I hope you have the wisdom to make your own decisions based on good information, and if you get a tarot reading, don’t take it literally. That’s my advice.

Another thing they used to say in La Leche League was that we preferred to give information rather than advice. I’ve talked about this before, but I have feelings about it. So here I am again.

When we were helping women with their babies, we’d let them know what we knew, what the current research says, and what our friends had experienced with their babies. Women would listen to all the information, then make up their own minds about what would work for their families. We had run into so many mother-baby pairs that we knew what is best for one might not be the best for another.

A mother-baby pair where the baby is the mother’s size

And you know, people seemed to like that approach. Lecturing and saying “you should” often makes people shut right down. People tend to dislike hearing that they are wrong, and often spend a lot of time justifying their own actions rather than taking in new ideas and considering them.

Goldie likes it when I read her a bedtime story

I’ve chosen to take that approach and apply it to potential “arguments” and conversations. Ooh, and I also apply it to exchanges on social media. I find my own self shutting down when I mention an issue I’m having only to find half the world telling me what I should do. It feels like people are ordering me around, even though I know perfectly well that, in their minds, they are giving suggestions! Thus, I try to answer anyone’s questions to make it clear that I’m just giving one data point, not my authoritative expert declaration.

As I recently read, the older you get the more you realize you aren’t an expert at anything! You know you have more to learn. The more you know the more you realize you don’t know, or something like that.

After 4 years as a Master Naturalist, I know I don’t know much at all about the nature of Texas. But I’m happy.

I got to thinking about this when I was reading a book (Getting along with Horses: an Evolution in Understanding) by Crissy McDonald, the spouse of Mark Rashid. She talked about mentioning sharing a photo of a horse that was hobbled (a way to keep them from wandering off when you don’t have a fence). Now, she knew what she was doing, the horse had been trained to be comfortable with the hobbles, etc. But people on social media just started yelling at her that she was abusing animals…before asking her pertinent things like what the horse’s experience with this was, how was she using the technique, etc. There was no effort to be curious about what she shared.

Sigh. Been there myself! Seen it happen to others so many times. I know that there are people who increase their self esteem by putting others down to build themselves up. I know there are people who honestly believe they are experts on most things. There are folks who just love to argue/debate. There are people who just don’t know much social etiquette. Like Crissy, I do my best to send good thoughts to people like that and simply not engage. You’re not going to teach these “experts” anything. They don’t want YOUR lecture any more than you want theirs, right?

Buy the way, I’m done with cat butts for a while. I gave 8 of them to Dorothy tonight.

So, treasure those around you who are willing to pass out information and let you decide for yourself how to use that information in your unique situation.

Consider, after reading all my information, using the techniques of just offering up things you know, experiences you’ve had, or opinions, not getting all invested in whether your input is acted on. Perhaps the other person has something going on that makes your information inapplicable, and that’s no reflection on you (or me).

Well, I got that off my chest. Two rants in a row. Whew.

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