Alright, let’s talk about this astrology business. For a long time, I kinda just ignored it, you know? But then, curiosity got the better of me. I thought, hey, millions of people are into this, maybe there’s something to it. So, I decided to dive in myself, give it a real, honest try.
My first step was the daily horoscopes. You know, the ones in the back of the paper or all over the internet. I started reading mine every single day. Every. Single. Day. And yeah, sometimes it felt spookily accurate. “You’ll face a challenge at work.” Well, who doesn’t, right? Or “An old friend might reach out.” Okay, that happened once, and I was like, “Whoa!”
So, I thought, okay, level two. I got one of those fancy natal chart readings done. Paid a bit of money for it too. It spat out this long document, all about my planets and houses and what-have-you. It said I was creative, a bit stubborn, valued my friends. Honestly, a lot of it sounded like me. But then, a lot of it sounded like pretty much anyone I know. It was general enough that you could make it fit. My neighbor Brenda, she’s creative. My old boss, stubborn as a mule. See what I mean?
This is where my practical, roll-up-my-sleeves side kicked in. I started to really test this stuff. I didn’t just passively read it anymore.
- I began reading the horoscopes for other signs. My sign, my wife’s sign, my dog’s sign (just kidding… mostly). Funny thing, a lot of the advice for a Pisces could totally apply to a Scorpio on any given Tuesday. The wording was so slippery.
- I looked back at past “predictions.” Stuff like “Expect a financial windfall this month!” Well, I got my usual paycheck. Does that count? Or “Travel is in your stars.” My commute to work is travel, I guess. It was all so vague.
- I started paying attention to how many different horoscopes for the same sign on the same day would say completely different things. One would say “lay low today,” another would say “it’s time to shine!” How’s that supposed to work?
Then it hit me. It’s like when you buy a red car, and suddenly you see red cars everywhere. You’re looking for it, so you find it. Confirmation bias, I think they call it. You want to believe it, so you pick out the bits that match and ignore the bits that don’t. It’s human nature.
I saw folks around me, good people, making actual life decisions based on this stuff. “Oh, I can’t start my new project, Mercury is in retrograde.” Or “He’s a Taurus and I’m a Gemini, so it’ll never work out.” Come on! People were boxing themselves in, limiting their own lives because of what some star pattern supposedly dictated millions of miles away, millions of years ago.
It felt like a cop-out. A way to avoid taking responsibility or making hard choices. Blame it on the stars. It’s easier than facing reality sometimes, I get that. But it’s not real. It’s just… stories. Like fairy tales for adults.
So, after all that – the reading, the charts, the observing, the actual thinking about it – I came to my own conclusion. It’s entertaining, sure, like reading a fantasy novel. But to base your life on it? To believe it actually predicts anything or defines who you are? Nah. That’s where I draw the line. It’s just a whole lot of cleverly packaged nothing. Fun for a bit, maybe, but ultimately, it’s just smoke and mirrors. I’ve got better things to do with my time, like figuring out what’s actually going on in my life, based on, you know, actual facts and my own actions.