We Must Choose Joy Again and Again

Or, revisiting the Sun's antidote to our victim mentality

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Last week, during a ridiculously enjoyable and nurturing Q&A with Chelsey Pippin Mizzi of The Shuffle (which you can watch here if you missed it - yay for replays!), I revealed that I’ve been struggling in the mental health department lately. Specifically, I seem to be waking up experiencing feelings of overwhelm and anger instantly - finding myself at war with the day before it’s even begun and spending the rest of it trying to regain my footing with varying levels of success.

Later that week, my therapist reminded me that we ultimately choose our emotions, and that if I am staying angry each morning, I am for some reason choosing to do so.

I all but bit her head off.

Even though she’s probably right.

I may not actively wake up and tap my fingertips together like an evil maniac wondering, “What can I be mad at today? Come on, brain. What inner tempest from the fiery depths of hell can we conjure up and release upon my mortal soul?”

But, perhaps I am choosing to dwell in thoughts that perpetuate my anger and irritability rather than choosing thoughts that have a chance of balancing or neutralizing the negative emotional reaction I no longer wish to have.

If we want to choose differently, we can.

I revisited my meditation on the Sun tarot card, which I wrote last summer when a similar dark mood was upon me. I have actually begun writing a follow-up newsletter that incorporates other tarot cards into this discussion. So stay tuned for more of this in the weeks to come!

For now, please enjoy this newsletter from the archives, covering:

• Mental health

• Self-image and self-talk

• Reading tarot reversals

• And for paid subscribers, my Self-Image Tarot Spread for you to use as a daily or weekly check-in with yourself.

I’ve been a regular ball of sunshine lately. A real joy to be around.

Just ask my husband. Or my dog. I believe the phrase “I need coffee and for you guys to be, like, less existent until that happens” is illustrative.

We were on vacation when I said it.

I will spare you talk of my anxiety and overwhelm and depression because, frankly, it’s not an excuse to be an asshole.

Or if it is, I’ve worn it out.

The Iliad Bookshop, one of my favorite used book stores in Los Angeles, has a magical selection of vintage psychology and mythology paperbacks. I honestly buy them for the retro covers (and the $2 price tags) more than anything else. But earlier this week, when we were packing up our dog for our annual pilgrimage to escape the hellfire and brimstone that are the guerrilla fireworks of Los Angeles, I grabbed one of these paperback purchases almost without looking and tossed it into my suitcase with my tarot deck.

So there I was, sitting in a cozy arm chair by the window of our spacious cabin suite on the Central Coast, seething in a paradoxical yet inconsolable combination of overwhelm and boredom and trying to silently bully myself into “fixing” my attitude before my husband got out of the shower so we could have a nice little day by the sea with some nice little chowder in a sourdough bread bowl and some nice little photos I could send my mother.

Don’t worry, dear friend. I know by now that this was not the way.

So I took a few deep breaths, got up to give my dog a good belly rub, dug out my randomly packed reading material and tarot deck, and settled back in with an ever so slightly lower amount of rage and a just perceptible note of openness and curiosity.

I turned to page one of my book, which happened to be Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz:

The quest for happiness is, to so many people, a grotesque traffic jam. The motor keeps running, but the car can’t move.

Too many people have renounced happiness; too many feel that living has lost its kick for them; too many find no purpose in their days.

I didn’t know whether to guffaw in delight or burst into tears.

Hi, it’s me. I’m “too many people.”

When I get into these depressive spirals, it’s almost like I’m having an out-of-body experience. There’s the (normal? happy? real?) me somewhere off to the side watching this sad, angry version of me either hurling insults right and left (some of them a bit below the belt, I’ll admit, but others quite caustic and clever if I do say so myself), or dramatically throwing herself onto the nearest bed and announcing her utter inability to go on. And I wish I could just give myself a good slap in the face like on a sitcom where someone is having Hollywood’s version of an “anxiety attack” and talking a mile a minute until their friend gives them a good whack and they cartoonishly quiet down and come to their senses, you know?

Alas, this is real life.

So all I could do was take a few more deep breaths and turn the page:

There are people who live, and people who use rationalization to keep them from living fully.

…

There is no excuse for negative thinking, which wastes human life. When a person drowns himself in such a pattern of thinking, he is committing an unspeakable crime against himself.

Yet in our complex civilization people too often live with boredom or anxiety rather than adventure.

(This is a great time for a much needed disclaimer. Bouts of mild pessimism, worry, irritability, and a general not-great attitude happen to the best of us. Pop psychology books like this one - and tarot readings for that matter - can be insightful and helpful when we are basically okay but need a mindset shift or some tough-love motivation. But more serious and debilitating depression requires medical attention, friends, so please contact a medical professional if you are having a hard time and this newsletter is triggering. I’ve been there, and I send you love.)

If you’re unfamiliar with Maltz, like I was, he was a pop psychologist from the 1960s and 70s who coined the theory of self-image psychology, which argues that (assuming a clinical, brain-chemistry diagnosis is not involved of course), much of our anxiety and depression can be traced back to a poor self-image, one we may not even be aware we have. And if we can improve our self-image, really accept and love ourselves as we are, we can enjoy a newfound lust for life and appreciation for the joys of everyday living, even despite inevitable uncertainty or tragedy.

I wasn’t sure - and am still not sure - if I want to keep reading. But Maltz’s idea of our self-image and, more importantly, his pretty stern kick-in-the-pants notion that we need to grow up and stop our negative thinking is really intriguing to me. (Remember our whole 7 of Wands discussion a few weeks ago? This really reminds me of that!)

What self-image must I currently be harboring to be so pessimistic and irritable, I wondered. And what small step might I be able to take - even today, right now - to improve this self-image?

I grabbed my tarot deck, closed my eyes, and leisurely shuffled while asking, “What is my self-image today?”

And I got the Sun.

Reversed.

Because of course I fucking did.

The Sun shows an open, childlike enthusiasm and spirit of adventure. Sun energy means we are bright, cheery, optimistic, and joyful. We look forward to what life has to offer and we trust that things are generally working out and we will generally be okay.

The Sun reversed can mean, well, not that.

(For further examples of the Sun reversed, please catch me first thing in the morning when I have been woken up again at 5:00 am by my next door neighbor’s canine menagerie, which, by the way, has introduced a rooster as its newest member for reasons unknown.)

A lot of people don’t read tarot reversals. I actually don’t most of the time either. For starters, they can be confusing and tend to send many tarot readers (especially beginners) into a spiral of overthinking and second-guessing, which are really not the mental muscles we are trying to exercise when working with tarot.

Another reason many opt out of reading reversals is that they can be kind of anxiety-inducing and negative. When you wake up and start the day with a tarot card pull and get something like - oh, I don’t know - the Sun reversed, it can put a real damper on things!

Similar to the Sun, another tarot card the reversal of which can induce panic is the Ten of Cups.

We might groan, wring our hands, rend our garments, and wonder why the Universe has not chosen to bless us with joy and harmony, or become anxious about a disaster befalling us that will snatch the happiness right out of our lives.

But I am here to give you that loving but potent sitcom slap in the face we just talked about!

Let’s take my reversed Sun, for instance. I sat with it for a bit, and it felt like looking in a mirror even more than tarot reading normally does because of the nature of the question I had asked: What is my self-image today?

My self-image that day was crabby, not playful.

My self-image that day was uninspired and bored, not adventurous.

My self-image that day was irritable and negative and pessimistic.

At first I was a little embarrassed.

I thought of my husband and how it must feel to wake up next to me and hear whatever gem I choose to make my inaugural words every morning. I imagined how I would feel sitting next to me for a five-hour car ride, or across from me in a booth at a diner.

(In fact, I feel the subtle sting of shame welling up in my eyes as I type this. Whatever, I’m PMS-ing.)

As that emotion passed over me, I felt a new wave come on: sadness and self-compassion.

I would love to be this smiling idiot on a horse, my arms wide open to embrace whatever bullshit the new day has in store for me. I would love that more than anything! Wouldn’t you!? This tarot card allowed me to extend a bit of compassion and understanding to myself. I know things are hard and I feel sad and scared for some reason. That feels shitty, and I’m sorry I’m going through this hard and unpleasant time.

And then, thank goodness, a new emotion came over me: hope.

Out of the 78 cards in the tarot deck, it was the glorious Sun card that came out to represent my self-image. I could have drawn a much darker and constricted card that morning, like the Devil or the Nine of Swords. But I didn’t. I drew the Sun.

Now, is the joyful essence of the Sun currently buried underneath some not so savory debris? Sure.

Is this essence a little blocked or hidden right now? I’d say so.

But it’s there! I’m looking right at it.

And this shift in perspective about reversals made me realize that my self-image isn’t a lack of Sun energy, but a rejection of Sun energy.

And when we reject something, we are making a choice.

And if I - for whatever reason and however automatically - am choosing to reject Sun energy right now, that means I can choose to embrace it as well.

If we want to feel joy, we must choose it. Over and over, in situation after situation, day in and day out. We can’t just stand around in disappointment, anger, disillusionment, cynicism, or victimhood, waiting for joy to float into our atmosphere of its own accord and just seep into our pores.

Trust me, I’ve tried. And that’s unfortunately not how it works.

We must actively choose joy again and again.

And this doesn’t mean never having any negative thoughts or feelings by the way! (This Substack newsletter is a strict no-toxic-positivity zone, thank you very much.) The Sun tarot card for me goes beyond fleeting moods and emotions, which is more the domain of the Minor Arcana. As a Major Arcana card, the Sun card shows us an archetype that is in a more deep-seated, permanent state of trust and openness to all that life has to offer. He is so innocently accepting of his self-image that he is living in an overall state of joy, even if that necessarily means experiencing the full gamut of human emotions.

So the next time a tarot card like the Sun or the Ten of Cups shows up reversed, we may want to ask ourselves how we might be rejecting this beautiful energy. And, as a follow up question, how can we choose differently?

If you are as intrigued as I am about getting in touch with your self-image and how it affects the way you show up each day, here is a simple two-card tarot spread you can use as a daily or weekly check-in.