Clear headed
I feel alert. I feel clear. Here's what I have to say:
One of the worst things people can ever do to each other is act jaded when listening to someone else talk about a life-changing realization they just had. So what if you had that same thought 2 years ago? Wasn't it awesome when you first thought of it? So why would you pull that kind of shit on this person? Maybe you need to hear it again anyway. Or they need you to understand. Whatever your role in the conversation/relationship is, I'm pretty sure it's not condescending bull sheeeit.
I just caught myself doing this so this blog entry is me reminding myself of what I really stand for, and how much I have left to learn.
I was talking to Leila yesterday about this astrological belief that happens when you are ~28-30 years old. I've heard it called the Lunar Return but she called it something else. I don't believe in the astrological explanations for it occuring, but I do believe it occurs. I've heard very negative things about it from certain people - how upsetting and unsettling it is, how you feel panicky like your life is going no where and it's time to grow up - but Leila had a very positive experience with the whole thing that made me excited to experience it in a couple of years. I want my whole life to be filled with exciting episodes of change. If I continued my whole life being the same person I am today it would feel boring and pointless. Every once in a while I get excited about all the unknown discoveries in my future and I guess today is one of those days. I hope everyone does this! Let's make a national holiday, called, ah, I can't think of anything not-cheesy, so how about "Disconnect/Reconnect," where all y'all bitches gotta turn off your phones and think about how much change is in the past and the future and how awesome it all is.
posted by Vanessa @ 08:46
3 Comments:
Hi, Vanessa! Did she call it, "Saturn's Return"? People accused me of going through that a lot in the last couple years, but really, I can't think of a time when my life and even my identity was not in dramatic motion (I've changed, for example, my legal name once, and the way I present my name in email once, excluding my legal name-change (I used to be "Rev. Joe Doyle Ardent", but dropped the Rev., 'cause I felt I wasn't walking the walk enough (woo, nested parentheses!))).
Anyway, I think one of the reasons that the phenomenon has a widely-known name when it happens at 28-30 is that by that time, people think that they've already gotten their shit together, and are done re-inventing themselves, so when the change-winds blow in, they're like, "What the fuck?? I thought I was done with this!" Except maybe they don't think that consciously, it's just that they've grown complacent, and so the change just wigs them out a little. When it happens again later in life, they're less surprised, and really, they probably by that point really are not in need of such drastic re-invention. Now that my thought-stream has meandered a bit, maybe I will conclude that Saturn's Return is the conclusion of adolescence, a final step in a decades-long birthing process, the rite of passage that gives you license to write for Grow-Up Magazine, the Magazine for Grown-Ups. But still!, it's not like you're done changing!
Yes, that's it, Saturn's Return.
I've also heard that the reason it's such a dramatic ordeal is because we never really finished our last stage of growth, that modern society's obsessions with material wealth rather than connection with other people stunts us permanently in a state of adolescence, which can be very upsetting at various later stages of life, like we've been cheated out of something...more.
I don't know if I believe any of this but it's fun to think about!
I too am in an accelerating continuum of changing. This is probably why we are friends.
Naw, that's it. Saturn Returns is your last life-changing period before you turn 56. It's supposed to be all about DISCIPLINE, so break out the leathers. It's only supposed to be painful if you've got no discipline and Saturn has to kick your ass (for your own good, of course). Oh, and I believe in everything, even bullshit astrology, so go ahead and make fun of me.
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