Why are Men struggling?

I read both the New York Times and the Washington Post most days and I'm astonished at how many articles I see about men,  and their struggles.  A  recent one,  by Shadi Hamid,  talked about how difficult it is to find a partner when religion actually matters to you and you want to raise your kids as Muslims,  which I found interesting. 

But in these articles,  and in threads,  it all seems that men have suddenly become overwhelmed.  Too many choices and yet they feel they are not chosen often enough; unwillingness to commit with an unwillingness to narrow their lives to this one choice.  It's like they can only draw  the seven of cups,  too many options leading to paralysis.  

What I tell everyone is that you can one cup, or I'll be super generous and give you two,  but you cannot have all the cups - and it's not personal,  it's not only you -  no one can have all the cups.  And to chose one means that others start to become less available. And we,  as a culture,  have to be okay with that.  I tell people you cannot be both a professional athlete and a brain surgeon.  The time constraints don't work.  So you have to chose one or the other. And yes,  you may always feel a twinge when you come into contact with the one you didn't chose,  but you can't have both.  

I think men,  who had the illusion of power for so long,  and now feel it ripped away by a myriad of cultural shifts,  can't chose.  And so they are struggling.

I guess I'm telling them to chose one,  commit to one,  cherish one and see what happens.  At least it's not paralysis,  at the very least it's a learning experience, and at the most,  it's a life changing/progressing one. 

Slowing down to the speed of life

It's a New York way of humble bragging,  to say how busy you are,  or to say how many things you have to do.  In a city of so many options,  it really is easy to fill every available moment with work or activity.  Sometimes it can be hard to find time to just sit and be.

One thing I love about tarot readings is that it is a dedicated hour - no other phone calls or texts intrude.  In fact,  I encourage people to record the readings and ask if they get lots of texts and if they do I tell them to put the phone on air plane mode,  as texts and calls,  even unanswered ones,  can disrupt the recording. 

So it's an hour without distractions,  where we just focus on you and your questions.   A lot of people tell me afterwards how nice it is to just give yourself the time to sit and think about things like if you are on the right path,  and if your actions are getting you the results you want.

The New York cards

There are some cards I think of as more typically New York than other places, that I see more here than I have previously – of course it might be a more second millennium kind of card too, as I have been reading here for the past 10 years.  My next few posts will be about these cards.

I’ll start with the Seven of Cups.

7 cups, Rider Waite deck

The seven of cups is about having choice,  but instead of feeling empowered,  “I have all these options!” the drawer feels overwhelmed,  “I have all these options but can only chose one…”  and there are consequences,  seen and otherwise, of each choice.  So now I stand paralyzed (or crouch if you are looking at the beautiful card below!)  not knowing which cup to select,  which cup to let go of. 

I find that New York in particular has this obsession with keeping options open.  But what I tell people is that after a while, making no decision becomes its own decision, and some of these cups will naturally disappear if they are not chosen. Some may go for a short time, some may go forever, that is life.  But choosing a cup, finding a direction, even if it not the ultimate direction but merely a side path, gives  life energy. 

7 of cups,  Klimpt deck

People often say to me that they don’t want to have regrets.  I think standing paralyzed and not choosing creates a regret of its own. So my other answer is that regrets are not cancer (unless we make them so.)  Regrets are risks that don’t pay off in the short term in the way that we had hoped.  And even if they make it to the long term (I will always regret not buying New York real estate when we arrived in 2002!) it doesn't mean that we should not act.  It just means that we lived and learnt.

7 of cups,  urban tarot deck

So these Seven of cups remind us to make a choice and live with it, and if it doesn't pan out the way we had hoped, then we will course correct and make another one…