The Miser

I’ve had a curious couple of weeks. I’ve been worrying more about money and feeling a greater and greater urge to conserve it. I have been noticing that more of my thoughts are centered around how much things cost, how much I can’t afford things, and feeling resentful about having to spend money on things I need. Now, if I was a spendthrift, then yeah, this concern could be considered an attack of conscience, and be a good thing. But I don’t spend a lot of money. I never have. In fact, I was listing off a couple of ways I could pare my spending down, after refinancing my car (which will reduce it a bit, but not as much as you think), and it was literally going to reduce my expenses by only $15 dollars a month. That’s it. There was nothing else to take out. This mindset has been slowly creeping in, so I didn’t even notice it until the last day or two. And it wasn’t until today, when I got The Miser card, that I decided to have a think about it.

A kind way of interpreting the 4 of Pentacles, also known as The Miser, is conservation or security.

Well, this is kind of interesting. I was thinking about security, or more specifically about the illusion of security, just yesterday. I’m in the process of buying out the lease on my car, and am taking out a loan to do so. One of the conditions of the loan is that I have to have a life insurance policy that will cover the loan if I die before I pay it off. While the agent was explaining this to me, she mentioned that it was generally a good idea to have life insurance. I think I may have shocked her when I said that I didn’t think my life was insurable and that I prefer to be worth more alive than dead. I had already experienced first hand that you can think you are secure and safe one minute and the next, have little or nothing left. For me, it was divorce. But the experiences also can come in the form of stock market crashes, natural disasters, accidents, terrorism, you name it. Since that particular illusion was shattered for me, I’m more aware that I am skating on the edge of a catastrophe curve, and that there are no guarantees. However, maybe it doesn’t stop my craving guarantees. 

But, why now, all of a sudden? I’ve had less money before and, while I was careful with it, I wasn’t worried or fearful about it. I wasn’t getting much more insight with this, so I pulled a card from a different deck to try and shed some light on it. Reversed Rabbit, which is about being paralyzed with fear. 

This is looking like a great day so far! 

The explanation in the book was about re-evaluating the process I am undergoing, and rearranging the way I see my present set of circumstances. Then a separate thought popped into my head about not doing anything rash. (As if!)

My present set of circumstances. I guess you could say that I’m at a crossroads. My business is limping along, I’m contemplating going to graduate school, I’m preparing to pitch a workshop to a group of therapists, and throughout all of this, I’m wondering if I should get a job because of the money situation. Ok, maybe not so much a crossroads as a train wreck, with different cars of the train trying to go in different directions at the same time.

Maybe this feeling of being pulled off my center is what is causing my craving for security. Because I don’t feel internally stable, I’m trying to grab onto something external that I think will keep me from feeling like a weathervane on a windy day.

Hmm. The number 4 in Tarot is about stability, and the miser is about gaining stability through material means. So, this new obsession about money and getting a job isn’t about actually needing a job, but about me trying to feel more centered and in control, despite the fact that job security and control are both illusions!

It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. So now what? Just because I can see what I am doing doesn’t mean the feeling of not being centered or focused has gone away.

Okay. Maybe I need to rearrange the way I see my circumstances. Maybe this is creative tension or I’m supposed to get comfortable with discomfort. Or, maybe the different directions that I feel that I am being pulled in aren’t really different directions at all. Maybe they are part of a bigger whole that I just can’t see yet, and all I need to do is peck away at them and try not to do anything rash.

I still can’t see how it all fits together or even what the next step is, and I can’t say I feel very calm, but I have a heading and that helps me feel a bit more centered.