Pick Your Battles

Or, how the 5 of Swords reminds us to see the bigger picture

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Before I was a professor, I was an intellectual mercenary.

I went to school for it and everything. I paid a handsome tuition to a state-of-the-art institution to be taught how to fight and, since then, I have been paid handsomely to demonstrate just how well I can duke it out on behalf of all sorts of people over all sorts of things. Things that don’t even matter to me in the slightest. For conflicts I could not care less about, I would hold your feet to the fire and present you with ALL. THE. RECEIPTS until you felt foolish for even attempting to spar with me.

I have been trained to be right and, in the just as frequent event that I am not right although I would never tell you that, I am under strict orders to razzle-dazzle everybody in the room until they either think I am right or are so confused, exhausted, or overwhelmed that they just want it to be over.

It turns out my naturally curious, compassionate, and collaborative nature was just not suited for this line of work. I was tired of fighting over things that didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t cut out for the ruthless bloodshed, and I found no fulfillment being the foot soldier in someone else’s war, even when I was thrown a piece of the victor’s spoils every now and then. And the phone calls! My god - the endless phone calls! My mind, body, and spirit were all rejecting my chosen profession, sometimes in subtle ways and other times in pretty dramatic and concerning ways.

So, after a few years, I quit.

It’s been almost ten years now since the last time I practiced law, but I still find myself noting inconsistencies in the testimony of family members, cross-examining students in the margins of their English 101 essays, and deposing the shit out of my husband who thinks he stands a chance at what would otherwise be an innocent enough marriage squabble.

Old habits are hard to shake. But I’m sure you would agree that one certainly doesn’t have to be a lawyer to struggle with the need to be right all the time. It’s really difficult and uncomfortable for many of us to compromise, let things roll off our back, or simply agree to disagree.

I found myself in just such a pickle last week.

During a session, my therapist said something that I found uncharacteristically flippant. (Uncharacteristically is the key word here. If your therapist - or any medical professional - is routinely insensitive or unequivocally rude, dump them ASAP.) And I couldn’t get over it. Days - nay, weeks! - later, I was still griping about it to my husband. I made up excuses to cancel our sessions two weeks in a row because I was so annoyed by what she had said, and by the third week, I had convinced myself that our therapy had simply run its course and it was probably time to end things anyway.

There I was, my email written (and rewritten, and rewritten again) all ready to go. And I couldn’t hit send. I started to second-guess this move, wonder if I would regret it later, and undid any certainty in the decision that I had mustered up to that point.

I shut my laptop and went to my bedroom to take a few deep breaths and consult my tarot cards. I pulled two tarot cards, which I often do when I find myself waffling back and forth between two choices and unable to make headway.

Here’s what I asked and what my tarot cards revealed.