Sunday Reflection: The World

I thought I was done with The World but The World was not done with me.

Hello, my friends! Welcome to this week’s Sunday Reflection, a series where I pull a tarot card to guide you through the week ahead. The intent is not to tell you how your week is going to go, but to give you a lens through which to consider your current actions, thoughts, and state of being. Please take from this reading whatever resonates with you and leave the rest.

I decided to make this one free for everyone! If you enjoy it and want to receive more Sunday Reflections in the future (or you just want to support my work), please consider upgrading to a monthly or annual subscription.

I had a feeling I was going to pull The World again, thinking about my own words in last week’s podcast episode: “I need to move on from this card, I’m losing my grip a little.” Every time I grapple with some of the deck’s more challenging themes to process – Death, The Tower, now The World – I have a tendency to get thoroughly lost in my own ideas and thoughts, expanding and expanding and expanding on them until I can’t possibly fit everything I want to say in one essay or one podcast episode. I end up leaving out a lot for the sake of brevity and/or coherence. Sometimes I just need to throw my hands up and publish what I feel is the best I can do at the time. As with Death (which I wrote about here and here) and The Tower (here and here), I guess the cards were making double-sure I’ve internalized their message by immediately sending The World to me once again.

My writing process involves a lot of sitting in front of my laptop either staring into space, staring at a half-filled Notion page as I write, delete, and re-write, or reading essays and articles semi-related to the themes of the card as a means of research as well as procrastination. A few days ago, I read an article about how fucked we all are in terms of ecological crisis. You know, just a morning treat as I prolonged laying around in bed before starting my day. I also listened to an interview with an environmental activist named Gail Zawacki; she spoke at length about how there is absolutely no hope of reverting the damage our society has done to the earth and no avoiding the total collapse of civilization to come.

All week, I’ve been ruminating on societal collapse along with the cosmic scale of our place in the galaxy and the universe beyond that, how little any of our existence means. How little time we have in this life, even if the doomers are wrong and we’re able to live out another 50 or 60 decades before food, water, and resource scarcity drives humanity into a Mad Max-style dystopian nightmare. And that’s only if a massive nuclear event or environmental disasters don’t wipe us out before then. Even if everything on a cosmic and earthly and societal level goes in our favour, we could still have a sudden aneurysm and die at any moment. Get creamed by a car while riding our bike. Choke on a too-enthusiastic bite of pizza. The future, on any scale, is not guaranteed.

After this week’s podcast episode, I felt like I’d already spent too much time holed up in my apartment in research and writing mode. I’ve been contemplating all of these heavy themes that stir my existential dread, a feeling that can pretty easily lead me to isolating and tuning out reality via media consumption while I rot in bed. I’ve been talking and writing more often lately about being active as a way to cope with my overthinking, anxiety, and depression, but some days I forget or I self-sabotage because wallowing is a habit I am still trying to unlearn. When I thought about sitting down this morning to write today’s reflection, I felt like I needed to get outside and be a part of the world for a little while first. I needed to touch grass and drink a fancy coffee, and maybe I would write in my notebook in the park rather than stay hunched over my laptop as usual. I packed my tote bag, acquired my coffee and headed to the park where I usually like to write, as it’s near the library and I can always find a free spot at the picnic tables there.

When I arrived, I saw there was an event happening to promote defunding the police, the normally sparsely-occupied field dotted with people in white folding chairs. A series of speakers were sharing a mic at the front of the crowd, gathered together to talk about their experiences with Montreal police and why defunding is essential to the community of Little Burgundy, which has historically been a predominantly Black neighborhood. The organizers had more speakers throughout the afternoon on topics like harm reduction, safe injection, and protesting migrant surveillance, all tied to the cause of defunding police and redistributing funds to resources that will actually serve and strengthen the community, not intimidate and harm it. I perused all the tables they had set up for different causes, all piled with books, zines, totes, tees, and flyers with details on how to learn more, how to get involved in whatever spoke to you. I stopped and chatted with the two people running the table devoted to environmental activism and climate change. They gave me a pamphlet titled “Climate Rage” and I tucked it in my tote bag, feeling a glimmer of amusement that I’d escaped my apartment to avoid thinking about the world’s impending climate collapse for a few hours and somehow ended up at an info booth about exactly that anyway.

As I always say: I am an extremely powerful witch! My intuitive powers grow stronger the more I trust them, and following them leads me to exactly where I need to be. I could have stayed cozy in my apartment all day as I worked on this post but I thought “No! Heed your own advice and get out into the world!” and that lead me to this inspiring display of community support and people spreading hope that we can build a better existence together. It’s significant to me that I resisted my typical existential wallowing and the universe immediately opened a different path forward for me. Even if no amount of collective action will save us from societal and ecological collapse in the next 20 or 30 years, I suspect it will still feel better spending our finite time here on Earth uniting and building up our communities rather than languishing in isolation or whatever it is rich people are doing that seems to absolutely rot their brains and hearts.

I love and cherish you all. Have a beautiful week and remember to listen to your intuition! Enjoy the last of the summer sun! Join a cause you care about! Touch grass! Drink a fancy coffee! Pet a dog! Chat with a stranger! Remember we’re not here forever so let ‘er rip! Ok bye!