The Faeries’ Oracle – Indi

The Faeries‘ Oracle – Indi/ (Photo credit: Brian Froud)

While the world may be full of possibilities, there is no better timeframe for those possibilities to take place than summer. Everyone gets pumped up for the middle of the year because that’s when the weather is most stable, time is given to students to go explore and when families generally take time to do things together. Anything can happen in the summertime. On our own, we pick and choose what our summer activities will be. With groups of friends, however, often there is a vote to decide what they’ll attempt together.

Sometimes that vote isn’t particularly in your favor. Sometimes the activity takes you out of your depth. Sometimes you don’t know if the activity sounds like a good idea.

My card for today’s reading is Indi. As in indecision. He couldn’t have shown up at a better (or worse) time for me. While summer is still begrudgingly coming along where I live, my friends are already preparing for what they want to do. Every year we all pick a few things that we want to do together and then vote on them to solidify our plans. Every year, one particular friend brings up a big skydive adventure. This year, it seems that my friend has won the votes of our group.

Indi fits in with this dilemma because I am not a particular fan of heights or planes. I have gone along with all of my groups’ choices for the summer and I feel like I would hurt my friend’s feelings if I were to back out of the plan this year. Granted, our plans are usually safe endeavors like kayaking, road tripping, camping in a new state and the like. Still, I would feel awful if I chose to walk away from this experience. I also don’t like the idea of finding the highest point for a human to reach and then race a bunch of other people to see who hits the earth first.

Indi isn’t really meant to help us with indecision. Whereas other faeries give guidance or direction for the actions that we should take, Indi sits on our shoulders and offers a “well yeah, but what if…?” He doesn’t know how to make up his own mind on how to help us, so he really has no clue as to what course of action we should take when we have options. He thinks that if maybe we gave him more information or more tangible evidence that swings in favor of one decision or the other that he could better help us.

This faery shows his empathy and humility by not wanting to hurt feelings or ruin lives. He spends so much time thinking of all the possible and outrageous implications of every choice that he’s afraid to make any sort of commitment. His insecurities mirror ours. When met with a difficult choice, we tend to weigh it heavily, leading us to put off a definite answer because of how important we view the matter.

Of course, therein lies Indi’s help for us, even if he can’t decide that it’s actually helping or hindering us. If we look at our choices objectively, we can see that we are poisoning our choices with our own fears. Sometimes, we just need to commit to a choice and see it to the end for better or worse. Sometimes, it’s smart for us to gather as much information and evidence as possible before making the right choice. The key here is that when it comes time to make the choice, we don’t hesitate.

I still don’t want to go skydiving, though.