Lost? Of Course, You Are
Just Don't Make It Worse
The hymn “Amazing Grace” wouldn’t be so popular if we didn’t get so lost so often and yet were able to hold onto hope that somehow we’d find the way out of the abyss.
The lines imprinted in our culture are:
“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
I once was lost, but now am found”
The symbolism for that in the Tarot is the Death card.
The message of the Death card is not the end of life but the need to begin a new one, like it or not. Note that the horse’s hoof is lifted, ready to move forward, whether you are ready or not.
Lost is an interim stage. The acute pain is being clueless about what you can put together. If you’re a successful professional like the seasoned public relations representatives that Edelman laid off in 2023, you likely never anticipated you’d wind up in that limbo state. You had always been pro-active, with a plan, always building new track records for success.
But it’s not just you, not currently. Whole sectors are becoming lost. Right now, for example, elite progressive law firms have been thrown off course by the Trump administration. Through an Executive Order Perkins Coie has lost business. Its existence could wind up in play. Meanwhile, Wilmer Cutler, Paul Weiss, Jenner & Block, Gibson Dunn and Milbank are among the other firms which could wind up in a similar crisis.
Ironically the head of one of those firms - that’s Brad Karp - projected that Paul Weiss would be a very different law firm by 2028. Well, the date will have to be pushed up.
How law firms select clients and how clients select them, what social-action causes they can embrace and what political candidates they can support is being reconfigured. Meanwhile, they are lost.
The trick is not to panic.
One real estate executive had had it with his career. Previously always driven, he was thrown for a loop by this lack of purpose. Typically he self-destructed. That’s what too many lost do. His way was embezzling.
After two years in prison this former executive came to me for a Tarot reading. What he found was that he never wanted to be a business professional. He wanted to make a living playing music. And, he found his way into music, two years later than was necessary. In his reading the Four of Swords came up. That stands for pausing.
If only had he chosen to pause when losing his footing. That pause wound up being superimposed on him in the slammer.
Lost can just mean lost. Not on a downward trajectory. In this volatile era, lost will probably happen several times. Each time will be painful. But the strength, openness to possibility and hope come from preventing ourselves from self-destructing.
The takeaway: Don’t make it worse.