Major Arcana: Card 0

I stare at the ominous desk in front of me. Seventy-eight cards stare back. Amidst the blinding glare of the cold winter sun, one captures my mortified attention. Zero, the Fool. Thrown down like the rest, the Fool still floats to the surface to haunt me.

I am zero. I am the Fool, the beginning, the faith, and the folly. These cards decide my life, with their embellished borders and smooth surfaces; like my fate, slippery and meretricious. The Fool-the only word my eyes can read in the sea of possibility-shows the only qualities I see in myself. Yet nothing about me embodies the Fool. I lack spontaneity; I can't accept my choices; I don't let go of worries and fears.

I let the cards govern my life. The unconditional trust of the Fool I see in myself. "This card mocks the questioner," the spread guide should say. Below him I see, slightly buried, the card of despair; the IX of Swords. This card, shrouded by shadows, stabs at the questioner's deepest fears. I find myself fearing my future.

The rest of the cards—the Star, the Empress, the VII of Cups—become obscured by the sun. They possess too much goodness and light for me to even consider them. No, I am the Fool, the nothing, the zero. Naive and trusting, I walk myself off the cliff of indecision; push myself into the abyss of relinquished control. I pass on my responsibility to inanimate objects printed in China. They decide my life choices, not I. I submit to their will. I no longer possess any control of my life.

Yet, save for these occasional lapses in certainty, I feel no guilt for my inaction or diversion. These cards are my veil to the world; I see in them what I want to see. The frenzied delirium of blind devotion fades, and the sounds of the outside world trickle into my consciousness. But fear still lingers, fear that one day I will be responsible for my decaying future.