Parallel and oppositional
I perform a lot of cartomantic readings related to business – small business and big business. I hear this complaint all the time:
I’m not sure what my niche is these days. Who are my people? How can I serve them all in the best possible way?
Before I lay down any cards, I start with my specialty:
‘No and no and no and no and no, just say the fuck no.’ There’s no such thing as ‘niche,’ ‘my people,’ ‘my tribe,’ ‘customer service,’ and so on. There’s only you and the thing you do completely independently of them.
If you do your shit well, perform it in virtuous and virtuoso ways, and according to what you know is the best manifestation of what you do, then the key to your success is simply to keep doing what you’re doing. In other words, just keep going.
This invention, me versus them, is a cultural marketing thing of the capitalist greed orientation that renders you in the ditch ever so fast, especially if you’re a small business. This invention, a nasty one at that, creates an unnecessary, and I dare say, delusional split between the idea of ‘you’ and the idea of ‘them.’ The greater the separation, the more someone stands to gain. As it also happens, this someone is never you. Rather, it’s very likely someone who will also try to sell you the notion of them as a community, because, hey, community is where it’s at… Let us be spared the lie.
Just think, and see if it makes simple sense, as I’m sure you’ve heard it before: as you can never please them all, whosoever ‘them’ is, you might just as well relax about it. Keep doing what you’re doing.
You may listen to critique and take what’s good about it, but to let critique kill your spirit is a very bad idea. Develop discernment, so you know just how to meet your resistances. You don’t want to commit the gregarious faux pas, and stubbornly declare that you’re above all opinions.
We all know what opinions are, especially the ones that completely identify with emotions, but if you pay close attention, you can actually learn something. If nothing else, you get stronger in dismissing the erroneous idea that emotions have any meaning whatsoever. They don’t. Emotions don’t exist other than in your own head. No one else has access to your emotions. So, to expect others to act on your emotions, or that you act on their emotions, is a very bad idea.
What you learn when you see this formula flung into your face, ‘my opinion equals my emotion, and my emotion equals my knowledge of everything,’ is that you can get very fast at recognizing it as nothing other than linguistic fiction based on pseudo-intellectualism and more emotional fiction. See it for what it is, and then say no to it.
With this in mind then, think of this: no matter what you do, some will decide to be in opposition, declare themselves your enemies, outright and not so outright, as some prefer the tactics of being in opposition by spreading rumors. You may not even have a clue about this opposition, making you go: ‘Huh? Who the fuck are you?’ That is to say, if you should be invested at all in questioning the belligerent attitudes against you, as it’s very unlikely that you’ll ever succeed in changing the minds of your haters.
The crux of the matter is this: you either run your own run, parallel to whatever else is happening in the world, or you waste your energy considering the claims that will place you in opposition. The point is that, at all times, you’re either above competition, or you let yourself be dragged down to where others see you as competition.
Just think: how can you ever bring the oppositional in alignment with the parallel? You can’t. Get your geometry straight. What makes you think that you can ever fix people’s perceptions of what you do? They are their perceptions, not yours. For better or worse. Why would you ever even bother with other people’s perceptions? Because you’re afraid of them? Because these perceptions give you an image of yourself as part of a community? Because of the popular, yet false dictum propagated by shallow thinkers that, no, no, no, it’s never about you, it’s always about them? Since when? Ha, ha, and ha. Who has time for these intentional acts of deceit, delusion and conscious hypocrisy?
Here’s what I suggest instead, since I’m in the mood of expressing an opinion of my own: if you ever feel depressed because someone has the opinion that you are being oppositional, when in your own perception you merely run your parallel track, not even having time to notice what happens in the other line or lane, try having this imaginary conversation:
‘Opposition? Competition? Who says?’ Then address the one who objects: ‘who the fuck are you? I never even heard of you. How can I be in opposition to you, when I don’t even care about what you do? I don’t know you. We may even have gone to the same school, work together, live in the same city, and marry the same woman, but I don’t know you. I only care about what I do, and how well. Get it?’
I guarantee one hundred percent that you will feel elevated. Not only that, but you will also feel free and liberated. What’s best, you will start laughing so hard that you will have a very hard time remembering when the last time was that you laughed like that. You can then thank yourself for feeding the demons of anxiety, and others, a good portion of laughing matter.
After this relief, get your cards, if you’re into busting your blind spots through this kind of contemplation, and ask two questions related to you alone, having the awareness that you, as a concept, already includes everything, also them, the ones who have objecting, and often also, either unfounded or uninformed opinions about your own good self.
‘In what ways am I parallel to what happens in the world?’ You can replace ‘the world’ with whatever concern you have, if it be business, relationships, existential, or environmental crisis.
‘In what ways am I oppositional to what happens in the world?’ You can replace ‘the world’ with whatever concern you have, if it be business, relationships, existential, or environmental crisis.
For such questions I like to use the Council of 13 (inspired by Etteilla’s layout for his Grand Ettoille spread of cards), and simply let the inner and the outer frame of the layout define the tension between what’s parallel and what’s oppositional in life at a particular time and concerning a specific issue. Though keep in mind that what you want to arrive at is the strengthening of your position and attitude. It is all about you: you doing your thing, fearlessly, unapologetically, and blissfully at ease with yourself, and hence the world.
Do others, who don’t know you any more than you know yourself already, want to see this attitude as a manifestation of you against them, of egocentrism, or heresy and rebellion? Why don’t you let them? Let their watching you be their entertainment, not your waste of time.
Now let’s look at some Russian cards for a snappy, visual take.
The cards above suggest the following:
When the stuff that you do is completely familiar to you (Ace of Hearts), then whatever you put out into the world will be entirely on your own premise (8 Spades to Queen of Spades).
As for new projects?
Surely it’s not a question about checking with others about it, all the time asking them for permission to do what you’re goddamn good at, and what is already familiar to you (10 Hearts, 8 Hearts, 8 Diamonds).
Rather, it’s a question of saying: ‘Here it is, my sparkly creation in its refined form (8 Diamonds, 9 Diamonds). Take it or leave it (King of Diamonds, Ace of Clubs).
Keep going.
♠
Cards: Jugendstil reprint of “1001 Night” Playing Cards, Russia 1972.
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Take no prisoners
My book on reading with the playing cards cuts to the chase, and there’s no cosy room you can run to. Some love the merciless approach, others are in opposition. But ask this Queen of Spades, if she cares either way?
