Parting the Mists

We have so many choices today that it can be overwhelming, yet we all claim to want them even if we freeze in the choosing of one thing over another. This weekend, between the (hopefully) relaxation and fun, consider your choices and why you are making them. Is this the easy thing to do or least confrontational? Are you choosing time for yourself as well as with others (or perhaps vice versa)? Choices, like dahlias, are lovely to look at, but we need to be able to move forward in a positive way with the choices we are making.

Blessings and have a lovely weekend,

Thistle

Dahlia – Choices

Keywords: Picking and choosing, evaluating many options, spoiled for choice, decisions decisions, seeing all the alternatives, deciding what’s best

Meaning: The lady on this card is not just a dahlia herself – she also loves dahlias and is trying to decide how to arrange some in a vase. A single bloom? Which one? Or both together, for contrast? We all have to make choices. Some are basic: what to have for breakfast; and some are life-changing: whether to settle down with a partner, whether to have children, and other such serious issues.

Then there are those sticky moral choices that can drive us half insane while we weigh them up – fortunately, having actually made a choice, we usually feel better. Choice sounds great. Most of us like to think we have options, that our life is not mapped out in one ever so predictable line. If you are keen gardener, think of all the beautiful dahlias you could choose. You won’t buy them all, but is not great there so many? The actual act of choosing is fun, not just the outcome. And you really can’t make the wrong choice in that situation. But how about a much more serious kind of choice? Imagine that you were offered two jobs simultaneously. Both of them are in the field you enjoy and in which you have some skill and experience. One of them is adequately but not well-paid: the other will earn you quite a bit more for the same number of hours, but you will have more responsibility. What do you do? This particular one is not a moral choice, but it is tricky. When you’re faced with this kind of difficult decision, make a list of priorities. Ask yourself what you really want and what you would miss most if it were they taken away. The simple but profound exercise often points a way forward.

The Victorian Flower Oracle by author Sheila Hamilton and artists by JJ Grandeville, Karen Mahoney, and Alex Yukolov