Card of the Day: Three of Pentacles

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Rider Waite Coleman Smith [/caption]

This is one of the few cards in the tarot that refers specifically to the group (the Three of Cups is another). In this case, the group with respect to work. The card depicts a stonemason working on a cathedral, consulting with a clergyman and a patron or architect.

Realizing our goals never happens in isolation. Yes, we must write the book or make the painting or submit the business plan, but seeing a project through to the end always involves others. That might mean collaborators, cheerleaders, the lineage of our chosen field, the literal Earth from which our food and materials come and that enables us to literally do our work.

Work wasn’t always about making money. “Work,” or labor, was simply the activity of human life—securing food, shelter, warmth, relationship, safety, making more human life. Capitalism monetized work and turned it into something else: the thing we have to do to be able to do what we need or want to do, for example. This framework isn’t working out so well for life. In fact, the only people it works out well for are the super-mega-rich, and they are still going to die, no matter how big their pile of gold is.

Some of us—like me—have the extraordinary privilege of doing work that is meaningful and creative, that supports our life and that we enjoy. Many, many people do not. Many people have just lost their jobs and are lining up at food pantries, wondering how they’re going to pay their rent, support their families or pay for healthcare.

What would it feel like to live in a world that supported people actually being deeply connected to life, themselves, other people, and the Earth through their work? Where the toxic myth of individualism, exposed for the dangerous lie that it is, gave way to an appreciation and celebration of our profound interdependence and creative potential? Where work was the sacred activity of our life?

What does work mean to you right now?