I ran across1 the following quote from Anais Nin the other day:
“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.”
Contemplating Ms. Nin’s words, I shuffled my deck, seeking a card from the Tarot to explore it further. I drew the Three of Pentacles:
There’s a really important lesson in Ms. Nin’s quote: We can create the world in which we want to live. Indeed that lesson grows in importance when we live in troubled times such as we are facing today, and as she faced in her own lifetime.
And if we fail to create the world in which we want to live, we will assuredly live in someone else’s dream, or nightmare.
That has so much to do with our attention. Where do we put our attention? What do we amplify with our attention?
I imagine that most of us in 2025 know people who have allowed themselves to be so consumed with politics that they have made themselves miserable and crowded much joy out of their lives. But should we become so intent on politics that instead of living our own lives, we are living in some politician’s nightmare?
Surely, balance is the key. Fight for what we believe is right, yet continuing to hold on to our own personal joy, and the joy that we bring to those around us when we are not completely consumed by negativity.
The politics of the day is just one obvious way we could end up living in a world created by someone else. Surely there are myriad others.
But to be truly happy, and fulfilled, don’t we have to, as the quote from Ms. Nin suggests, create our own world?
And I think that the symbolism of the Three of Pentacles adds something important to this as well. The workman, the person creating on the card is being visited by two other people. They aren’t themselves actively creating at the moment pictured, but they are with him, and speaking with him.
The Three of Pentacles shows us here that when we are creating our own world in which we live, we attract others who share our perspectives. We find our people.
