Less than two months ago, I packed up and moved 270 miles from my home in Atlanta, Georgia. Not a super far distance, I know, but the change was shocking, to say the least. Of course, there were many little changes:
It’s rainier here. There’s a lot of one-way streets. There are SO many new slang words that I didn’t know before. (Most of my friends here are from South Florida, so I feel like I’ve inherited a new language.) But all these changes were to be expected when you move to a completely new state for college. But besides new vocabulary or weather, I’ve been introduced to something way more fascinating and unexpected: astrology.
I should preface by saying that before I moved to Tallahassee, I knew two things about astrology. One: that I’m a Taurus. Two: there’s a horoscope feature on Snapchat that’ll tell me the rest. But I quickly discovered that I didn’t know nearly enough to even be able to hold a substantial conversation about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-stars or anything, but it just was never really a topic of interest for me and or any of my friends back home. We never talked about astrology. So here, I usually just sat, smiled and nodded until the topic of conversation changed to something I could contribute to.
But it quickly became unavoidable. My friends here at Florida State University (FSU) are really into astrology. Time and time again I found myself struggling to keep up with the conversation, trying to remember if it’s socially acceptable to say that I like Capricorn men or wondering if my Virgo Moon was good or not. Hearing “What’s your sign?” became just as common as “Where are you from?” However, as much as I tried, I just couldn’t keep up. There were too many parts of it I didn’t understand.
Every personality type seemed too vague and obvious… I was convinced that anyone could read me any random description and then slap “Taurus” on it, and I would probably be like “OMG, that’s so me!” And it seemed absurd that everyone within the same month can be grouped into a certain personality type. I have a twin sister, and we were born one minute apart, so our birth charts are similar down to the degree. But we’re so different…so how could our charts both be accurate? It just didn’t make any sense to me.
But my friend, Evie, has a book on astrology and relationships, and the other day I opened it up, really expecting nothing of it, but I was overwhelmed with information. It was filled with everything you could possibly want to know on how each part of your birth chart interacts with different relationships in your life. I distinctly remember thinking “Oh, this is like…serious.”
I had a big realization: It goes so much deeper than I thought. Astrology is so much more than just your “Big Three.” I learned that different parts of your chart are different parts of you: how you act, how you love, how you are perceived and more. I learned that your birth chart is like a snapshot of where the planets and stars were at the exact time of your birth. It’s basically a map of the energy that you’re working with this lifetime. And that sometimes you just won’t identify with your birth chart because our personalities evolve over time, not at once. Plus, others might see the traits that we don’t identify with much more clearly than we do. See! Slowly, I’ve started to pick up on little things. I learned something I would have never learned in a class.
That’s been my favorite part about college. I’ve met countless beautiful people from so many different backgrounds. We share our interests, our childhoods, our stories, with each other, in hopes to understand one a little bit better. We don’t all have to have the same hobbies or interests. That’s what makes all of us unique. And when people you love are passionate about something, it makes you want to know about it too!
So no, I’m still not an astrologer. I still don’t quite get what my birth chart means or what my “Mercury” is. But when my friends talk about it, I listen. I try to learn. I ask questions. And if I don’t get it, that’s okay too!
I don’t understand astrology, but that doesn’t matter. I’m here to be a friend. I’m here to listen.
I’d like to think that maybe that’s what the stars had planned for me all along.
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