Image description: A hand is holding a Tarot card, Seven of Pentacles by Pamela Colman Smith. In the image, a person is dressed in an orange tunic with blue leggings, one brown boot and one orange. They are gazing at a fruiting bush, and the fruits are pentacles. They are leaning on a gardening hoe. This is an image of harvest time, a plant in its fruiting stage. Much was involved that led to this moment.
I’ve gotten really interested in the practice of giving something that feels brand new to you—like a skill, ability, insight or way of being—a history. Historicizing starts with the recognition that new skills, abilities, mindsets and ways of being don’t just drop out of the sky. They come from somewhere, carrying a scrapbook and a past. They have bags that they drag along with them, all bulging with mementos.
When you start to do something different from how you’re used to operating—or thinking about yourself as operating—there’s often a sense of risk that the new way will get swallowed up by the old. This could happen out of habit, or out of other people being used to the old way. It could be that the old way has a thicker tale that takes up more space, or an evidence drawer that’s much fuller and is therefore more convincing.
But think about it: If you’re taking care of yourself in a way that feels unfamiliar to you, how did you get here? Who along the way might have predicted this for you? Does this way of being have an origin story, or a past life? Is it possible that your ancestors practiced it? I want to know about precedent. What in your past supports the possibility that this skill belongs here, and has some staying power?
I personally love when I’m able to slow down enough to see myself doing something different than I’ve done in the past in a way that reflects evolution in a direction I feel good about. And I’m learning that there are ways to bolster those experiences so they feel less fleeting, anomalous, and less vulnerable to being swallowed up by the old ways or old stories. I’ll give a couple of examples.
As we all know, I think about the character Perceval from the Grail Legend a lot. I think about how after failing to ask the question that would have healed the king’s wound and restored the land, it takes Perceval a long time—years—before he gets the second chance when he finally does in fact ask it.
There are many examples throughout the story of Perceval as unreceptive and overbearing with his will. If you’ve read the story or heard it told you likely came to believe through a host of examples that lack of curiosity was an essential trait for him, a core way of being that wasn’t up for change or negotiation.
As he’s leaving home he sees his mother fall to the ground, and doesn't go back to check on her. Soon after that, he forces a girl to kiss him and then steals her emerald ring. He rides his horse straight into Arthur’s castle—which, who rides a horse indoors?—and then demands to be made a knight. He goes to the grail castle, and doesn’t ask about the grail. It really seems like this is who he is.
So when Perceval arrives for the second time at the grail castle and asks the grail king what he’s going through, it’s very tempting to believe this ability to ask is brand new for him. But it’s not. In fact, Perceval has a long history of asking.
In the very first scene of Chretien de Troyes’ telling, Perceval’s life is forever changed when he meets a group of knights who he thinks are God and God’s angels. They question Perceval about a group of people they’re out looking for but become quickly aggravated with him. Why? Because he responds to every question they ask with a question. To the degree that the head knight gets mad, and calls him scatterbrained.
We could definitely dwell here some, giving a history to Perceval’s habit of not asking, and how that came to be. But for now we’re more interested in the preferred behavior. And we can see here that for Perceval, asking is far from foreign.
I have another example, too, this one’s more personal and it also involves a dream.