The Meaning of Life is Just to Be Alive

Or, how the 2 of Pentacles brings us down to earth

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Both my husband and my therapist accused me this week of having withdrawn from my life.

In my defense, as a Pisces and an Enneagram Type Four, I hardly stand a chance. I thrive in the potential and fantasy of possibility in my head. If I open my eyes and participate in my actual life, I will unceremoniously crash down into a pile of sporadically functioning appliances, an invariably inadequate wardrobe, fits of inopportune stomach aches, and students who still think professors are not onto ChatGPT, all topped with a generous dusting of dog hair to tie the flavors together. (I’ve been watching a lot of Chopped.)

Even further in my defense, doesn’t new age wisdom encourage us to withdraw from our lives a little bit? If our current lives are not up to our standards, we are instructed to spend time each day visualizing our dream life with such vivid detail and such high-vibe emotion behind it that we stop identifying with and limiting ourselves to the undesirable and imperfect conditions we actually live in and in so doing open ourselves up to receiving more.

We are urged to stop associating with low-vibe people and putting ourselves in low-vibe situations lest we get infected by this undesirable energy and inadvertently tell the Universe we want more of it.

And when we find ourselves in a bad mood, feeling discouraged or self-critical, we are told to - quick! - engage in activities that lift our mood and get us back in that high-vibe state of gratitude and abundance.

But what happens if the law of attraction doesn’t work? Or rather, what happens while the law of attraction is still doing its thing and so has yet to deliver the goods?

Our dream life hasn’t manifested, so we don’t have that yet.

And we’ve energetically abandoned our partner, family, friends, home, job, and neighborhood, so we don’t really have those things anymore either.

We are left with nothing.

That’s a whole lot of meditating and visualizing and journaling for nothing!

Over the span of this last week, I think I drew every two in the tarot deck for my daily tarot card pulls. (Our intuition isn’t going anywhere, and it has all the time in the world. It will repeat and repeat a lesson and never get blue in the face.)

In numerology, two means harmony and balance, something Enneagram Fours don’t really believe in. We don’t have the constitution for moderation. We are so desperate and committed to finding meaning in life that we will dive head first into any identity or way of seeing the world that promises to deliver it. Nevertheless, this tarot parade of twos seems to be telling me to reel it back in because I am all out of balance.

The final card in my series of twos this week was the 2 of Pentacles, which has particularly struck me.

In the Two of Pentacles, an asinine figure in an even more asinine hat is engaged in an eternal juggling of priorities, obligations, commitments, activities, even resources. And in the Rider Waite Smith deck, a choppy sea rages in the background.

In my literature courses, when I’m teaching students how to identify the tone of a poem, I define tone as the poet’s mood or attitude toward the poem’s subject. Sometimes we may think we have a poem’s message figured out, but if we go a little deeper with our analysis of the diction or imagery used, we can uncover subtle instances of tone that can greatly enrich our understanding of the work.

(For example, when you actually dissect Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” you realize it’s a poem about regret, or at the very least a melancholic reminiscing and wondering of what-ifs, which makes it not only famously misunderstood but a super awkward choice for events like graduation ceremonies!)

The condition of the sea in tarot cards works in a very similar way. It can reveal the underlying mood of a card in a way that may color the message in a new and interesting way. And this is exactly what the sea in the background of the Two of Pentacles does for me.

Penis hat aside (or maybe because of the penis hat?), the figure in the Two of Pentacles is having a grand ol’ time. He’s doing a little jig while showing off his juggling skills, almost as if he’s on a stage. He is confident that he can keep juggling those two pentacles forever - for infinity, if you will, like the infinity symbol along which the pentacles seem to roll back and forth between his arms.

I don’t know how familiar you are with juggling, but a mere two objects does not a juggling situation make. You need at least three, according to my high school drama teacher, whose weeks-long juggling unit with hacky sacks was the bane of my existence. I’m training for a future on Broadway here, Mr. Dugger, not the freakin’ circus!

All of which is to say our juggler in the Two of Pentacles has everything under control, even despite the tumultuous sea behind him.

But here’s the thing. The juggler may exude confidence, capability, endurance, even organizational and time management prowess. And yet, the storm rages on. And that, my friend, is the detail that has made me feel quite ambivalent about this tarot card even up to now.

No matter what we do, how hard we work, how spiritually or emotionally evolved we become, the ups and downs of life will rage on. And you know what? I will admit that that’s been a deal-breaker for me of late. It’s like I looked back at the storm, then looked down at the pentacles in my hands, and said, “Hell no. No way. I work way too hard and deserve way more than this nonsense. No, thank you. No, ma’am. Not doing it!”

And lately I’ve either been heaving the pentacles back into the ocean whence they came or at least choosing to completely disengage with them and leave them on the floor for somebody else to deal with.

If it brings my vibes down, after all, don’t I have a responsibility to myself - and the future I want to manifest - to not give it more energy and instead turn to higher-vibe activities that bring me joy?

Remember how I said I drew every two in the tarot deck this week? A couple days ago I, in essence, asked my tarot cards where I was going wrong and what would right the ship (to continue the nautical theme of our discussion). The Two of Pentacles was the card for righting the ship.

As for where I had been going wrong?

The Two of Wands, one of my favorite tarot cards purely for its escapist and invitation-for-fantastical-dreaming properties.

How could this be!?

In the butt-kicking words of Far East-meets-hippie philosopher Alan Watts:

No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

Ouch! In fact, I insist you take another look at the photo above and read that quote again.

I think this is precisely why I feel like I’m working so hard and coming up empty. I have become so consumed with my vision for my future - my absolutely gorgeous, alluring, and irresistible vision for my future - that I feel like I have no need for my current circumstances, which quite understandably fall disastrously short of said idealized vision.

Daydreaming about a particular life isn’t the same as living it. And where the trouble lies is that while we’re busy not living our ideal life, we’re actually not living our current life either. We’re not living any life. We’re not living.

And if we have no capacity for living now, as Watts says, how can we possibly make plans for any kind of future life?

In fact, Watts has also famously said that “the meaning of life is just to be alive.” Now. In this moment. In these circumstances.

My tarot cards essentially told me enough is enough. I need to stop withdrawing from my current life in the name of dreaming and planning for a better future.

Less Two of Wands, more Two of Pentacles.

Because, to paraphrase John Lennon, life is what happens to us when we’re busy making other plans.

And no amount of meditation and high vibes and planning will make the waves of life subside. The swells will not ease and we have no choice but to go on. To truly live, we have to get in there and juggle the pentacles we are given. As best we can, and for as long as we can.

We can continue to dream and make big, beautiful plans too, just as long as we don’t forget to also live.

If you feel like you are exerting effort but coming up short, here’s a simple two-card tarot spread to help you right the ship.