The main picture on this card is of a friend of mine jumping.  She came in with two of her workmates for business portraits.  For her photo, she jumped really high over and over again, landing barefoot on the concrete floor.  I was impressed, but also concerned about the impact on her feet.  But she wasn’t.

 

The second image is of a lake surrounded by rocks at a campground in Swannanoa, NC.  The lake’s water was reflecting the sky.  This made it look more like the edge of a cliff than a lake.  I added more sky behind my jumping friend, and there you go … you have The Fool.

 

The Fool marks the beginning of our journey in life and within Tarot.

 

So let’s begin.

 

The barricade light blinked on and off near the window of our otherwise dark dorm room on the last night of freshman year.  

 

I’ve tried to explain what a barricade light is to people.  It’s that sawhorse blinking, warning light that you see when there is road construction.  How my roommate managed to fit it into her car I’ll never know.  She was a bit of a genius that way.

 

We knew each other a bit from high school, although not well, and had decided to room together at college.  It turned out to be the best decision ever.

 

I remember prank calls (who knew how fun it was to have your own phone during the days of land lines?), new and old boyfriends, football games, late nights, and laying in our bunk beds talking at night.  The freedom to be ourselves was amazing.  My roommate would often do top of the bunk bed tricks by hanging head first off the top bunk and saying “no hands” or “no hands and only one foot” with a huge smile on her face.  One time I told her that I needed to go get in the shower and would not be there to save her if she fell.  Meanwhile she was screaming, “no feet and no hands!”.  She promised me she would be good.  I closed the door to the room and immediately heard a huge crash.  When I reopened the door she was in a ball on the floor laughing hysterically.  We were silly, open and free.

 

The last night of that year we laid in our bunk beds talking.  Together we had seen so much.  We had learned that, on the whole, you do need to go to class and that it was not wise to take classes together, because it was too tempting to leave before class even started.

 

We gleefully explored this new world relying only on our internal compasses.  There was so much joy, and certainly heartaches as well.  But, we helped each other up when we landed too hard.  

 

There were tears in our eyes as we spoke into the darkness of the room that night (save the blinking light).   We knew there would never be a year like this again.  

 

When we entered college we didn’t have a definition for what it is was to be a freshman at college.  But now we did.  And, from now on, our experiences in college would no longer be our first experiences and could be measured against the past.  

 

That night we longed to stay right there, immersed in the magic, joy, openness and extreme freedom that was our freshman year.

 

When this card finds you, it’s time to take a leap of faith.  The Fool ushers in freedom, spontaneity, curiosity, and a childlike innocence.  You can’t choose The Fool; it chooses you.  And, when it does, you’ll know it’s time to jump.

​