There’s that cartoon of the man with a pickaxe who gives up an inch from the diamonds. He drops the tool, turns his back, walks away. And the diamonds right there, on the other side of a thin wall, waiting for one last swing that never came. What stopped him? What was missing? Was it just not knowing where he was?
You don’t have to live long to have felt that. So close, and so far at the same time, and suddenly you find yourself walking in retreat. The retreat doesn’t always look like giving up. Sometimes it’s exhaustion, sometimes it’s a voice telling you that this time trying was stupid. Whatever the name, the movement is the same. We drop the pickaxe an inch short.
When I thought about this image, the image of the Fool from the tarot came with it. The man giving up on the diamonds could be seen as the inverse of the Fool, the one who steps off into the abyss without knowing what’s below. But I suspect he’s not the inverse, he’s just the before. The Fool was probably the man with the pickaxe many times. He dropped the tool, turned his back, walked away. Many times. And that’s exactly where he understood what stopped him.