#the goalpost shifting on what's qualities as acceptable and on one hand i feel like ive gotten a lot better in a short period of time but | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

arcanalogue · 4 years

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Still quiet on the job front and I’m feeling more anxious than usual. Part of me knows there has to be a tipping point, that I’ll find something when the time and opportunity is right... but the louder part is saying I’m a failure and no one wants me. How can I deal with this egoistic nuisance so I can stay positive to what needs time to manifest?

This is my last reading with this particular visual configuration — Dalí tarot, seashell, black-and-white scarf that was given by a traveling friend last month. I’m going to miss it! Anything that helps mark the time, instead of letting it slide past in an undifferentiated stream.

Allow me to unburden you a bit, Querent, if I can.

Games like chess teach us the value of looking several steps ahead, strategically plotting a course based on the likelihood of certain outcomes. But life doesn’t work that way, Querent. Though it may prove to all be just a game, it’s not as simple as anything we’re used to entertaining ourselves with.

Strategy is only possible in chess because there are only so many moves available to either side, and each piece has its own limited range of motion. Nothing in real life is similarly constrained! But because have absorbed all kinds of impressions about what ought to be possible, we tend to blame ourselves when reality simply doesn’t play along.

People commonly rely on tarot and other forms of divination as part of their strategy, hoping for a clearer glimpse of the carrot at the end of that stick, or to avoid certain pitfalls, or gird themselves for the longer battle ahead.

However, in terms of implementing anything we discover in a reading, all we can really do is take the next step.

And in fact, the structure of the deck itself is built upon this very idea. The minor cards walk us through life simply counting steps: Two, Three, Four, and onward. Every new step symbolizes something different, unlocks a new perspective, informs the next step.

Stepping from Five to Six, we don’t sense the choices that await us at Eight, or Ten; if we did, we’d probably mess it all up. We can approach these thresholds with ever-greater awareness, but we can’t realistically plan for them. Those choices will be made by a different version of us; our responsibility in this moment is simply to take the next step.

Sometimes the cards dictate which direction we ought to step in. Other times, they simply inspire us to keep up our momentum, lest we balk and stop stepping altogether. Sometimes they remind us that the ground under our very feet is dissolving, and receiving news like this may not be a great feeling, but it can compel us to act, igniting our survival instincts.

Sometimes I think we set goals not to attain them, but just to keep ourselves moving. How often has it turned out that a goalpost has shifted right when we’re at the very threshold of attainment, and we find we don’t even mind? Because our awareness has changed as a result of rising to meet our fate, and our desire proves to be just as malleable as the conditions of the world around us. Amazing!

You, Querent, have kept up a brisk trot over the past months, setting goals and revising them, cultivating receptivity while also setting specific targets. It’s draining — and yet, if you hadn’t behaved this way, you wouldn’t feel that you’d shown up for yourself and others who depend on you.

Putting in this kind of effort without reaping any apparent reward can bring about a full-on crisis of faith, at the one time when one can least afford it. It raises broader questions about one’s purpose, one’s value, one’s place in the larger scheme of things. These are questions without concrete answers, and they expose how dependent we are on certain external constants to feel any sense of peace or continuity in ourselves.

The Knight of Swords appears here, urging you to shrink your focus back down. This Knight is relentlessly task-oriented, but prone to growing scattered without a clear order of operations. Discipline and dexterity are his strong suits, but his attention is short and the pent-up Airy energy behind his movements means that when he drifts off-course, it can be very difficult for him to find the path again, because he takes three steps at a time. He requires patience and constant course-correction in order to truly benefit from his cleverness and agility.

This Knight sees too much, too far; he’s straining toward a target on the horizon, and can be forgiven for assuming the quickest path to it is a straight line. It would seem that way! But success is determined by taking just the next step, and letting that step’s discoveries inform the step after that.

That is your path toward the heart of the matter, The Sun, which has little to do with getting this or that particular job, and is more about that elusive sense of arrival: that so-called first day of the rest of your life. The Sun is also the card of ego, which I think shows how the very qualities that help us shine so brightly during better times work directly against us during fallow periods. Taking credit for our successes means also accepting the blame for our failures, when the truth is that both are mostly out of our hands; all we did was take the next step, and then the next one, and now here we are.

The Sun’s sitting pretty in the center of this reading, which tells me that a new day will indeed break for you, Querent. And following that, we see the moment afterward when you can finally lay down all those arms (which are just as likely to slice you as anyone else) and lick your wounds a bit more lovingly; from your current position, doing so can seem indistinguishable from wallowing, so you may be loath to do it, pushing onward toward the horizon instead.

Please don’t be afraid to heal as you go, Querent. You won’t bog down, you won’t collapse into a pitiful mush, and your disappointments won’t pile up into an impenetrable obstruction. If anything, tending to your injuries might just slow you down enough to help you choose the next step, and then the next one, so that you’re picking your shots with greater care and precision.

The version of you that comes later, after The Sun finally comes out, will be so glad you did this. It means they’ll spend less of their precious time in the tub tending to old, unnecessary wounds.

So I suppose my professional recommendation is to take that bath now, instead of later, and spend a little time each day interacting with your need to know what you’re working toward. Play with it. Foil it! Give it a bone to chew on, so it’s distracted and you can survey your options without it panting at your heels and putting its muddy paws all over your nice pants.

During stressful moments, whether in or out of the tub, try to remember: The gains you seek are already on their way to you. Just take the next step.

Have a tarot reading request or tarot-related question for Arcanalogue? Ask here. Tips accepted (but not required) via Venmo, @arcanalogue. Or support my Patreon? I’d love that.

Currently soliciting questions for my new advice column hosted by Haute Macabre!

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clusterassets · 6 years

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New world news from Time: Kim Jong Un Begins ‘Writing a New History’ as the First North Korean Leader to Visit the South

There was a cheeriness redolent of a family reunion when the leaders of North and South Korea met for denuclearization talks at the peninsula’s demilitarized zone (DMZ) on Friday, shaking hands across the frontier before Kim Jong Un made history by stepping over the raised concrete slab marking the border to become his dynastic regime’s first ever leader to visit the South.

Then Kim, a portly vision of black in a Mao-style suit and horn-rimmed glasses, invited South Korean President Moon Jae-in to hop back across to North Korea, the land from where his refugee parents fled to the South on an U.N. supply ship during the 1950-53 Korean War. The two leaders then crossed once again to the South, hand-in-hand, before sitting down to negotiations at the DMZ’s Peace House.

“I feel like I’m firing a flare at the starting line of writing a new history in North-South relations, peace and prosperity,” Kim told Moon as they sat at a round table that had been specially installed in for the summit. Moon replied that there were high expectations for the leaders to thrash out a “big gift to the entire Korean nation and every peace loving person in the world.”

For Moon, reaching this point has been a lifelong ambition. He helped broker the last summit between the leaders of North and South, 11 years ago, when he was chief of staff to then South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. Now Moon has the top job and is charged with persuading Kim to give up his nuclear weapons and a hawkish Donald Trump administration to invest the time and energy ink a deal acceptable to all parties. A White House statement expressed hope “that talks will achieve progress toward a future of peace and prosperity for the entire Korean Peninsula,” and that Trump was looking forward to meeting Kim himself in coming weeks.

Korea Summit Press Pool—Getty Images South Korean delegation including President Moon Jae-in and North Korean delegation including Leader Kim Jong Un sit down for the Inter-Korean Summit at the Peace House on April 27, 2018.

As expected, the summit was meticulously choreographed and full of symbolism. An honor guard of Korean soldiers in bright traditional war robes welcomed the leaders, during which Kim appeared slightly uneasy, panting heavily. But he appeared in fine fettle once the leaders and their traveling delegations — seven from South Korea; nine from the North, including Kim’s influential sister — sat down for discussions on chairs marked with a map of a united Korea. Kim even ribbed Moon about North Korean noodles being popular in the South. He also said he was “willing to go to [South Korea’s Presidential] Blue House at any time” if invited, according to Moon’s spokesman.

But if the symbolism was laid on a little thick, it was perhaps because substantive outcomes were limited. North Korea is subject to strict new U.N. sanctions following its escalating missile and nuclear tests, meaning Moon alone has little power to offer economic inducements. Even a formal end to the Korean War, which Moon has mooted, would be hollow unless the U.S. was also party. (The nations technically remain at war as an armistice rather than peace treaty was signed.)

Read more: What Kim Jong Un Really Wants From President Trump

“Serious discussion about denuclearization is simply impossible because this is not so much an issue of South Korea, but rather an issue of the United States,” Andrei Lankov, professor of Korean studies at Seoul’s Kookmin University, told South Korea’s Arirang TV. “South Korea should push the United States towards accepting a compromise.”

Before the summit, Kim had already promised to end missile launches and dismantle his Punggye-ri nuclear testing site. During discussions Friday, he joked to Moon that he “would not interrupt your early morning sleep anymore,” referring to his typically daybreak weapons tests. But few believe North Korea will truly dispense of its nuclear arsenal after decades spent honing it. Late last year, the regime tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICMB) it claims could strike anywhere in the continental U.S.

“Let’s take denuclearization off the table — isn’t going to happen,” says Christopher Green, a senior researcher on the Korean Peninsula for the International Crisis Group. “But North Korea may be attempting to make a serious change of direction whilst also retaining a nuclear weapon.”

While the lives of the 25 million ordinary North Koreas are largely irrelevant for Kim, he does rely on the backing of 2 million-odd elites, who mainly live in Pyongyang and are growing increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of the nation, according to South Korean intelligence. “They’re not sure that the state will survive, but more than that they don’t feel like their children have too many opportunities for the future,” says Green.

Handout—Reuters North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s entry in a guestbook at the Peace House in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, South Korea, April 27, 2018. The writing reads “A new history starts now. An age of peace, from the starting point of history.”

Satisfying Trump enough to ease the sanctions and allow North Korea to prosper will not be easy. While China and the U.S. agreed last year that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula should be “complete, verifiable and irreversible,” North Korea likely has a different interpretation — one “to revolve around decreasing the saliency of nuclear and missile tests in its diplomacy, rather than the complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament desired by the West,” writes Karl Dewey, a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense analyst for Jane’s by IHS Markit.

Kim’s announcement of the dismantlement of Punggye-ri has been tempered by reports from Chinese geologists that it had already collapsed, possibly resulting in significant radiation poisoning. At any rate, its closure could simply mean North Korean engineers are satisfied with the design of their nuclear devices and thus no longer need to test, or that a second facility could be set up were further refinement required.

Read more: What Would Korean Reunification Look Like? Five Glaring Problems to Overcome

The challenge facing Moon is to keep the Trump administration engaged, even if the goalposts shift significantly from total disarmament. Trump’s hawkish pick for Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and new National Security Adviser John Bolton have repeatedly insisted that military options remain on the table, despite the utter devastation that could be wrought on South Korea and Japan by Pyongyang’s conventional, chemical and nuclear retaliation.

Lankov worries that the Trump-Kim summit “might not happen or might end in disaster,” because “there is always a possibility that at the last moment President Trump will listen to some of his advisers who will tell him nothing but full and immediate nuclear denuclearization is acceptable.”

Moon entertaining Kim was the easy part. Keeping Trump ameliorable and on message at the next summit is when the true work will begin.

April 27, 2018 at 12:56PM ClusterAssets Inc., https://ClusterAssets.wordpress.com

#Time #world #news #ClusterAssets #ClusterAsset #Cluster Asset Inc.#ClusterAssets Inc.

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omnipop-mag-blog · 6 years

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http://time.com/5257062/north-korea-south-dmz-kim-jong-un-summit/

Read more: What Kim Jong Un Really Wants From President Trump

Read more: What Would Korean Reunification Look Like? Five Glaring Problems to Overcome

Moon entertaining Kim was the easy part. Keeping Trump ameliorable and on message at the next summit is when the true work will begin.

The post New world news from Time: Kim Jong Un Begins ‘Writing a New History’ as the First North Korean Leader to Visit the South appeared first on OMNI POP MAG.

#IFTTT #WordPress

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