Upside Down World

My favourite Tarot card has always been the Hanged Man. There he is smiling amusedly while hanging on for dear life. From where does he source his easeful surrender? The Hanged Man is a powerful symbol because he represents the role of paradox in our lives: Through letting go, he transmutes a torture instrument into a symbol of divine glory. He has no control but complete freedom, no time but exists in the timeless, no recourse for action because he has already gotten his way. He jolts us out of our half-baked assumptions and flings us unceremoniously into the arms of truths hidden in their opposites.

The Hanged Man is also the inspiration for my first children’s book. After learning from children for twelve years as an educator, I wanted to return the favour and give them a sense of the great truths of life in a language they could understand. I also wanted to honour the universal nature of the lessons by setting them in a different culture. And so the story of a young Turkish girl discovering the paradoxes at the core of life was born. The more she gives, the richer she feels, the happier she is alone, the more friends she makes, the more she embraces the quiet parts of life, the more she discovers that it is a beautiful mystery.