Weekly Forecast: April 16-22
I'm tickled that we're getting such a harmonious reading just as mercury stations direct. This week has a clear path for growth opening up in front of us. Better yet, that path is lined with good times, focus in work, and the promise of adventure .
Sometimes happiness is the most difficult emotion to describe. We have a lot of training, after all, waxing poetic about hardship and struggle. Just look at all the songs about the agonies of love or films built around miscommunication and conflict (I'm looking at you, romantic comedies that would be 2 minutes long if people would just communicate normally!). These heightened feelings suck up all the oxygen in our lives, demanding attention and sometimes giving us lots to hide behind. It's easy to go on about existential struggles, but what about the positive - our success, growth, and happiness?
I suspect that a lot of this has to do with feeling fearful. We don't want to appear boastful, full of ourselves, or greedy. And we also don't want to tempt fate. Fully embodying our happiness makes that happiness visible which in turn makes us feel vulnerable to criticism or rejection.
So there's more to this reading than meets the eye. We start things off with the Three of Cups - we have a lot of celebrate, indeed! Hiding or downplaying what's going well in our lives would cheat both us and the people around us out of a necessary and important good time. It's worth pushing past any feelings that we might be tempting any lightening bolts from emerging from a cloud to knock us back into our place. That seems unlikely when you put it that way, doesn't it?
Letting our happiness flow freely is also a way of reaching out. How can we make lasting relationships based solely on suffering? This card is showing us that there are many people around us ready and willing to raise their cups to toast our achievements and their own. Collective celebration lifts us all up and builds positive experiences that bring us together and that we can draw on in trying times to come. For now, however, all we have to do is show up as our beautiful, flourishing self, welcoming anyone else who comes to join the party.
The Eight of Pentacles centers our reading around the idea of work. This card reminds us that happiness is a practice we must commit to over and over again. Far from being simple or effortless, happiness takes work. Like anything, it's easy at times and hard at others. The illustration on this card shows us just how much strength and abundance we can bring into our lives when we prioritize and commit to cultivating our happiness. I see this Eight as a reminder of how much stands behind our achievements. It's not blind luck or purely good fortune. We stand behind our accomplishments, willing to guide our progress and tend to all the little facets of life that need care. Now all those little practices have grown into something quite big and majestic. And that is worth celebrating for sure.
We move from the hearty tree in the Eight of Pentacles to the sprouting branch in the Ace of Wands. Taking our happiness seriously and celebrating it wholeheartedly is bringing good things our way. Instead of a hand popping out of a cloud and throwing a lightening bolt at us for being too cocky, we have a hand holding the promising start of something new. All we have to do is reach out and grab it. With a crowd of supporters cheering us on, I have a feeling we will. We just can't do it by making ourselves small or hiding for just how far we've come.