I want to be a lightworker, so burden me with glorious purpose.
That's it, I'm done.
I honestly can't decide on a look. It's a four-way tie between "cosmic river", "broody forest", "half-dreamed fairytale", and "bookish nerdy". Which one looks best tends to depend on my current mood, and I'm done trying to brand using my mood swings. Or am I? On one hand, I am trying to have an organized look, with lots of neat blank spaces and with the feel of a pile of neatly stacked notebook, accompanied by pen and paper. My tarot worksheets will be happy. Fables Den is a learning space and a workspace, after all. It's where you come to make a creative mess, journeying inwards, grasping a voice, or two, scrambling your findings on a vintage looking notebook.
And then my mood flips a switch. I want to go for the visually stunning. Textual presentation lavish in its simplicity with gorgeous photography as a backdrop to fill its missing poetic spaces. Fables Den is a place of archetypal soul-searching as well as creative literary musings. That seems to fit. It's supposed to inspire. It's supposed to look pretty. So which one is it!? I honestly don't know if I can ever settle. I am constantly torn between "just do whatever the heck I want" and "settle on a brand, settle on a look."
ALWAYS LOOKING OUT FOR A SIGN
As a tarot reader, a writer, a lightworker, more -er's--I keep waiting for a moment that feels right to me. A thumbs-up from the eternally-wise Universe, approving me of my efforts, congratulating me on aligning my website with my spirit’s purpose. It is the perfect creative manifestation and statement to the world. Fantastic job, Kim. Absolutely perfect. This is the exact frequency you want to be sending out. This is your vibe. This is it, yo.
Permission granted, from Galactic Mystery, from the All-Knowing Cosmos, from my Spirit Guides, my Guardians, my Higher Self, my Intuition with a capital I, my Inner Knowing—my—
Which got me thinking (again). For those of us who aspire to be lightworkers or start some kind of heart-centred business in one way or another, do we all feel the need to be validated by the Unseen? Do we all feel like we need to receive some kind of sign, ushered to us via synchronicity or a soul-wrenching epiphany? Show us that we can. Show us that we are meant to do this. Burden us with glorious purpose.
I’m half-quoting Loki from the Avengers, if you haven’t noticed.
WHERE IS MY EPIC “INCITING INCIDENT”?
The truth is, I certainly felt like I needed a cosmic welcome into the realm of lightworkers. After all, am I not supposed to have some kind of epic past life with angelic or deeply intuitive resonance, having been a teacher or guru or shaman of something, to be embarking on this journey? Haven’t I done this before so I get to do it again, in this lifetime? Don’t I need to have some kind of ability such as clairvoyance or clairsentience to call myself a lightworker?
Shouldn’t I feel like I am called to do this, like there is an invisible yet unmistakable gravity that pulls me towards my destiny? Like if I choose to not embark on this journey, some tragic shit is going to happen to turn me around towards what I’m meant to do, what I’m supposed to do?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially during the past few days. I was having a mini existential crisis. Nothing major or concerning or suicidal, but I was very confused and insecure about where my life was supposed to be going. A lot has happened in the past few months in my personal life, and some of those things really shook me to my core and yanked free my anchor at the bottom of my spiritual ocean. I was reminded of my own mortality through the mortality of another. Not the best mindset to be in when you live in a city in which a fabled mega-earthquake is long overdue. An earthquake that will bring destruction and havoc to everything I know. Everything. I kid you not, I am legitimately scared of this earthquake. I’m scared of dying, of losing my loved ones, of becoming separated from my cat. The most prominent fear that I have, however, was that I would never get to live the life that I was meant to live. I would never reach completion. I would never fulfill my purpose.
ALWAYS ASKING WHY
Long story short: that was why I started questioning myself: why am I doing this again? Why do I want to do this? Why do I want to do “Fables Den”? Is it because I like helping people? I like expressing my creativity and my thoughts? Is it just that I want to share my stories and what I’ve learned? Is it simply because I enjoy it immensely, and that it breathes air to my soul?
Yes. All of the above. But like, am I supposed to be doing this? Or am I missing the mark completely? Am I burdened with some other glorious purpose?
A lot of considerations, journaling, tarot readings, meditations and dream-work have gone into the process of unearthing the answer. Just so you know, this is only one facet of some of the things I have come to realize, which I intend to share with you in another blog post or two, but for now, let me just tell you what I’ve learned about my grand purpose.
THE “TYPICAL” LIGHTWORKER NARRATIVE
If you’ve read my “tarot origin story”, you will know that I was making fun of the idea of “having a coherent narrative in which you “answered the calling and became a tarot reader, you received the cosmic welcome and you were a tarot reader ever since.” You know what I’m talking about, right? You see those stories all the time, especially in tarot reader’s little bios. I don’t mean to diminish their narrative or the power of their narrative: a narrative is powerful precisely because it acts as a thread that connects the pieces of our life’s chapters together to form a cohesive story that can be used to empower and strengthen us. But it is also just a narrative. Just a story we tell. It is a conscious construction in which we string events together to create meaning depending on what we're trying to convey.
As a result of wanting to fulfill the typical lightworker narrative and perhaps stringing together visions and events that speak to our purpose, perhaps, we fall victim to our fervent desire to fit into a mold, to tell a story that we all know: waiting for a sign, waiting for permission, waiting for the “call”. For some of us, this may be all true and potent. Powerful synchronicities do happen. The Universe does try to connect to us in mysterious ways, or we become attuned to our truest selves more until one day, we "wake up" from the delusion that we can't be anything more than we are right now.
I SUPPOSE THERE WAS A “CALLING”
To be fair, tarot actually knocked on my doors four times. So I suppose I do have some sort of "calling", if you want to call it that, but the funny thing is I never saw that as a calling. The reason why I fell in love with tarot wasn't because somebody randomly decided to gift me with tarot decks twice, each time with a different deck incomplete in their own way, which "enraged" me enough so I eventually purchased a deck that scared the crap out of me, etc etc...
Long story short, who is to say what is a "calling" or a "cosmic sign", and what is not? I never took those "signs" seriously. But I took my choice seriously and who I was seriously. I took to tarot because it aligned with my literary background and my love for poetic symbolism. It was really just a natural extension of who I was (and still am) at the time. But even with that understanding, I still searched for a coherent narrative, I searched for the "big sign". Because, well, it's hard not to feel small from time to time, right? It’s hard not to yearn for that cosmic permission, right? Because we all want to be burdened with glorious purpose, right? We want to feel like our actions and our creative projects mean something. Something more than the lives we inhabit. Something bigger than ourselves. We all want to reach for the stars and become one.
NO MORE WAITING
Here is what I realized.
For me, the simple truth is, if I continue to wait throughout my whole life for that calling, for that grand permission from the Universe, the cosmic welcome—I will always be waiting. Because that’s what I feel like doing. You don’t need some grand synchronous gestures from invisible spiritual forces to tell you that you are meant to do something. You are meant to do something simply because it is what you want to do. More often than not, your desires are your truest and surest compass in life. They are both your North Star that guides you and the Anchor that grounds you.
Life is too short—so do whatever the fuck you want. What else you would rather be doing, instead? If you love it, do it, go for it. What other reason do you need? You do you. You tell your own story. You tell whatever story that suits your fancy. Here's a version of mine:
When I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be the manager of a convenience store because Asian 7-11’s are little corner-sized consumerist paradise complete with Japanese rice-balls, bottles of tea that cost only 20 cents CAD, lifestyle items that were glorious to look at as a kid, and freshly pressed fashion magazines wrapped in plastic. And then all of a sudden I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t receive a calling or anything. I just felt like it. It was something I wanted to do. From that point on, it was a meandering journey of wanting to be a writer, then wanting desperately to be a writer, then somewhat wanting to be a person who works in the publishing industry or any work having to do with words, then I wanted to be a tarot reader, but then I was like nah it’s not my thing, but after 2 years of inactivity I still wanted to be a tarot reader.
JUST DO IT
Now I still want to be a tarot reader. A writer. A creative. And I have come to anchor down into the belief that my purpose or mission in this life is to live out my life as I want it. So I want to be a tarot reader, then I’ll be a tarot reader. If one day I feel like I want to do something completely different, then I’ll just go ahead and do that. Because if I’m not doing what I want to be doing, then I must be doing something that I don’t want.
If you want to be a tarot reader, just be a tarot reader. Do what you want to do. Do what makes you happy. Follow your desires.
Be the hero of your own story. And remember, you’re the author, as well. You get to go god-mode and do whatever you want with your experiences. Pretty cool, right? Go meta. Go embody. Go within. Go without. Now I’m just spewing nonsense that sounds poetic and cool (or does it?).
YOLO
You only live once, yo. So honestly, like, just do whatever the fuck you want. Just do what you want. Because that's what you should be doing.
And you want it because it is what you are meant to be doing.
-Kimberly, out.
P.S. Also, for the blog banners, since I can't decide, I am putting a bunch of them on rotation. It'll be like a little oracle, matching whatever mood you are in as soon as you enter this site. Ha! *self five* This is so much better than a still one. Bwahahahahahahahhaahahha.
