"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
Dalai Lama, 21st century spiritual and political leader of Tibet and Nobel Peace Prize winner (1989)

We are finally perched upon the end of the Mercury retrograde cycle! Finally tomorrow in the wee hours of the morning Mercury will begin traveling forward again, depending on where Merc is in your charts it would say something about how it’s affecting your life. But not so fast…. Right as you think you’re free you will be operating under a somber Saturn Capricorn moon. Being a Cappy myself I’m used to being somber, if you think I’m not look closer, I carry a heavy load I’ve just learned how to make it work for me, or I’ve become stronger to shoulder it. While being a Cap is not as exciting as being a Sagittarius or as dramatic as a Scorpio, we do have some pretty cool attributes. Most of us are born as old souls, we are a responsible grounded folk, and are known on the Zodiac as the hardest and most ambitious of workers. I can say from personal experience that I always feel like a slacker no matter how hard I work, I never feel grounded but yes I feel like I was born a thousand years old which is certainly not fun, but then again who has time for fun when you’re clawing your way to the top! Now if that isn’t a Cap statement I’m not sure what is.

As usual the quote above encompasses my present space in life. I’ve had a rough couple of years, and during the dark winter of Alaska, you’re cocooned up with all the stuff you don’t like about yourself, and you find yourself surrounded by memories of things you miss, things you lost or in my case, the people I miss that are no longer with me.

I’m stuck working in an office all day long; I go to work in the dark I leave work in the dark. It’s not just annoying it’s unhealthy; every day when the sun goes down I get crabby for no reason at all other than I want to be in the light or I've forgotten to seen release. As the dark winter closes in around me, I am left with what I can no longer run outside and get away from. I’m left with…Well… Me and all the things that make me, who I am, all the good and bad components of my self in the physical body, and the experiences I’ve dealt with that well up like shadows in a room when you turn off the lights. There isn’t one planet at fault, person at fault, and really there is nothing at fault anyways, that’s just my own judgment of myself. Instead of being able to distract myself from the feelings and memories with fun filled outdoor activities, I’m stuck inside in the dark with them. It is such that we are forced into facing all the stuff that truly shapes us into what we are and then forced to sit and take a long cold look at it. The darkness of winter is a metaphor for the dark burden within, or at least that’s how my Capricorn self interprets message.

However as the teachings of the Dalai Lama say, you do have a choice about the suffering part. We all feel pain in our lives, it’s what happens it cannot be helped, but you still have a choice as to whether or not you suffer because of it. I don’t feel as though I’ve suffered anymore than anyone else nor do I feel as though I suffered in vain, and I am sure I will suffer more, but as steel becomes stronger with tempering, so do you as a human being. We are all allowed our own personal little pity party and the dumpster days as well, however you do have a choice, if you must suffer, make sure that you’re suffering is not in vain and that a lesson is learned from it that will serve your soul on a greater level. Nature never removes something without putting something else in its place; you just have to stop missing what is no longer yours and realize there’s something else that you should be appreciating.

So until next time here’s your boring Capricorn friend telling you to keep clawing, quit having too much fun, get to work and if you must suffer, suffer for a higher cause than just your own judgments against yourself. And now that I’ve preached it, I will do my best to practice it.