The Emperor on a Caregiver's Path

The universal order
and the personal order
are nothing but different
expressions and manifestations
of a common underlying principle.
-- Marcus Aurelius

You may recall from two previous posts that I sometimes pull a tarot card to help guide me through the day. Previous posts:

The Fool's Journey With Dementia

The Tower and the Caregiver

Today, the Emperor showed up.

Here are a few thoughts about what the Emperor symbolizes: authority, handling the material part of life, inner strength, manifesting creative ideas, creating order out of chaos, exercising authority, setting boundaries and working within a structure, analyzing and thinking rationally, making tough decisions, beginning and initiating new things.

These sound like great "qualifications" to include on a resume, but by showing up today, the Emperor reminds me that it's time to play an active role in setting my life in order. It's time to take control of my situation, put my life on a different course. Romeo's life in the nursing home is under control. His care happens without effort from me. I want to channel my newly-found time to creative, productive endeavors. It's time now to examine, perhaps to reaffirm, where my ambitions lie, to rediscover what I'm doing, organizing, building. Time to make decisions about my future -- a future that does not include Romeo. My work cannot include Romeo.

According to the Emperor, my vision of this new future includes translating my dreams into reality, acting on my decisions, and taking personal responsibility for all of it. I am driven to achievement, to working hard for whatever I determine to be the new course of my life.

The symbolism of the Emperor indicates this, and I also feel a strong intuitive sense of it. It is time to get to work, time to point my energy to the outside world, to give it the fruits of my caregiving experience. At this point, I'm not sure what that looks like, nor do I have much of a clue. I know only that I, like the Emperor, will follow up on these ambitions, will take an active role in shaping my future, and will do it with the true authority that is rooted in the wisdom that comes from my heart.