Today's Tarot: Eight of Cups (chosen paths, no regrets, daring)

I love this card! It falls in the middle of one of my favorite runs in the tarot, the seven, eight, and nine of cups. The seven of cups talks to us about choices and options. We have them and we are faced with what we are going to do about them (see that entry here). The nine of cups is ultimately about being happy, content, and satisfied with our lot (see that entry here). The eight of cups is about that intermediate step. It is about the process of making or having just made those choices and living in the new reality that the choice has created.

Every time we choose door a over door b, we set up an entirely new reality for ourselves. We have sometimes radically different experiences when we’ve chosen one path over another. It can be as simple as the choice over where to go for dinner. One will lead you to quiet space where you eat your Ethiopian food alone with your thoughts. Another might lead you to your favorite pizza joint where you meet up with a couple of acquaintances, slide into a political debate with a friend of theirs and end up with a job offer to go work for a Senator. Any number of things can happen and the eight encourages us to be daring in our choices and brave with the results.

Allow me to explain that last sentence. I was just reading an interview with Andrew McCarthy (the actor, director, and travel writer) and someone asked him about bravery. After a bit of back and forth about definitions, McCarthy said he believed there was a difference between daring and bravery. He said, “Daring is proactive. Bravery is reactive.”

I read it and I fell in love with the statement. And I am impressed with the universe for helping me choose the Eight of Cups, not fifteen minutes after I read this statement. The card epitomizes that difference and highlights the paradigm.

So, today, I encourage you to be both daring and later brave. Be daring (the tail end of the seven of cups) as you make your choices and choose your path. And then be brave with your chosen path and the consequences of that path.

Choose wisely. Choose boldly and then have no regrets.

My quote of the week this week is appropriate here: “Everything that happens, happens exactly as it should because that’s the way it happens.” (wish I had a citation but I don’t and if I ever find it, I will come back and cite this)

It is particularly true here. Even if in the moment, the daring choice you’ve just made feels like the absolute wrong one, be brave. You are on the right track … to somewhere. And that somewhere is going to be exactly where you need to end up.