10/31/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

Every one of us has a love story. Many different ones, in fact. We fall in love with people, yes, but we fall in love with so much more.

We can be in love with our pets, with ideas, with places, with songs and movies and TV shows, with inanimate objects. We can become obsessive, protective, and consumed with just about anything in our lives at some point.

We are so complex and so varied that there is no shortage of passion, and things to occupy it. We fret about whether our dog or cat is happy and healthy and buy it treats whenever we go to the store. We spend whatever time we can painting or writing or sculpting or playing music because we couldn't imagine not doing it. We wash and wax our car every weekend, we camp out to be first in line to a concert or movie, we work long hours at our dream job. We dote lovingly over the things that bring us satisfaction and happiness, and we do love them.

But that's not our love story.

There is the love of our lives, the one person we were meant to be with. The one person for whom we forsake all others. We spend our lives searching for a partner, someone we can trust and bond with, someone we can count on and share all life has to offer.

And yes, there can wind up being several, because we fool ourselves and people change, and we just aren't very good at choosing a life partner. We are not meant to be alone, the fact that falling in love is so intense and the chemical reactions involved are so overwhelming illustrates that.

We can be in love with our children, too. And our parents and siblings and friends. Love has a million definitions within us all.

Yet none of these is our love story.

Our love story is with ourselves. And as we learn with all the others, love stories don't always run smoothly, and they don't always have happy endings. We tend to put more effort into loving just about everything else in our lives than we do in loving ourselves.

Perhaps we don't think we are worthy of love, after all, we truly know all our secrets. Especially the ones that we can't even vocalize if we wanted to. The fleeting thoughts that shame us, the irrational anger or attraction we feel that disturbs us. The things we let slip away, the times we gave too much of ourselves away. A lifetime of things we can't begin to reconcile or even admit.

So we go on, treating our one true love badly. Blaming ourselves, ashamed of our true natures, fearing what we might really be. Abusing ourselves, or even worse, neglecting ourselves in an attempt to deny what we already know. Letting fear and doubts keep us from our love.

The stars want us to understand that until you figure out just who you are and embrace it, you cannot truly love yourself. Your love story will never start if you don't even know your lover, and it certainly won't end well.

More importantly, all those other people and things you love will ultimately feel hollow and unfulfilling. Whomever you love will always see that void, that conflict within you, and it might sabotage all the other love stories in your life.

Everyone of us has a love story, and it is with ourselves, and only we can destroy it, or make it a love for the ages. It will dictate everything you try to accomplish, everything you try to be. It truly is the love of your life.

The stars need you to know that it all starts there.

10/27/17 Friday Bonus

Today's Horoscope Friday Bonus!

All signs:

The stars want to congratulate you on making through another week. Take some time to relax and decompress.

They also want to let you know that many of the things you are worrying and crying about are things you should be laughing about instead. We get hung up on trivial matters along the way, and wind up giving them much more attention than they deserve.

So laugh it up and move on if it really isn't affecting your life that much. The world has no shortage of real problems for you to obsess over, but we'll worry about that on Monday.

Have a great weekend full of smiles and candy and questionable humor.

10/27/17

Today’s Horoscope

All Signs:

The stars want you to know that all the people you admire and look up to have to deal with a lot of the same things you do.  Misfortune, cruel treatment from people they know and people they don’t, heartache, self-doubt and self-hatred, worries over things they can’t control and cursing themselves when they let the things they can control get away from them, all the inner turmoil and insecurities that go with living.  

The difference is that they don’t let it show and they don’t let it stop them.

The world is scary, cruel and fickle and random.  We are all living in it, and yes, some people definitely start out with privilege and advantage, but we all start out with our own set of gifts.  Everyday you see people rise above their disadvantages by utilizing the advantages they recognize in themselves.  Sometimes we are so worried about what others have that we forget the things we possess.  

Many of the reasons we admire or respect people is because they rose above their station, or made it out of poverty or an otherwise bad situation.  They did that using the gifts they had and the drive to gain new knowledge to better themselves.  They took chances, they sacrificed, they believed in themselves when no one else did.  

You have that same ability and your own destiny to create.

The stars want you to know that many times the biggest obstacles we face in life are ourselves. They are not here to tell you that your struggles aren't real, they aren't going to tell you to just get over it. They are going to tell you to come out swinging, and see how far your sheer force of will can get you.

In case no one in your life tells you this, you are capable of great things if you want it. You might be surrounded by people telling you there's no use trying. You might be born into a society and economic situation that set you way back at the starting line. You are probably full of the same doubts and fears that plague everyone but true sociopaths.

But the stars want to tell you unequivocally that you have all the potential in the world. Nothing is easy, but it wasn't easy for those people you admire either. Go be someone that others look up to.

10/26/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars want to remind you that you give control away all the time, you just don't notice it. That's because we don't automatically think of it as a control situation.

There are the obvious times we give control away. We sometimes find ourselves in relationships where we are not the dominant one. Be it some controlling lover, a friend or an alpha person in our group. We cede control to our bosses, and to authority figures like the police.

Those situations are mostly social contracts, and as long as the people in control don't abuse it, it's the way things work. We also give some of our control away in everyday financial situations. Whether it's a mortgage or car loan, a credit card or a cell phone, we sign a contract that binds us in certain ways. Even with apps and social media, you sign an agreement and give up some rights, even to your own intellectual property. Again, that's the accepted norm.

There are times when we are tricked into giving control away. Crafty advertising and unscrupulous politicians and clergy can make us believe things that aren't real. They can sell us on fad diets and miracle cures, or get us to vote against our best interests. Salespeople can confuse and manipulate us into spending our hard earned money on garbage we don't even need.

We give our control away in so many other ways that don't really involve contracts or user agreements. Any addiction is giving control away to whatever it is you're addicted to. Be it alcohol or drugs, sex or food, any compulsion you give into has control over you. Hence the expression “out of control.”  We can be staunchly independent, and defiant of anyone that tries to tell us what to do, yet turn around and give complete control over to booze or cigarettes or cupcakes.

Then there are even more insidious ways we give our control away. We don't even think about it in terms of control. For instance, if you're angry at someone, you're giving them control. If you're obsessing over them, if you're worried about someone that's judging you, you're letting them control your thoughts and actions.

If you're concerning yourself over how other people are living their lives when it doesn't impact you at all, or finding yourself getting worked up over sensationalist news items, you are letting your fear and insecurities control you. The less you know about something and the fewer sources you get your information from, the less control you have.

Loss of control, like nearly everything else in your life, is brought on by fear. Fear of responsibility, fear of failure, fear of pain. Fear of fear, to be honest. Most of the time we can't even name our fears, yet we give control of our lives over to them in a heartbeat.

Being in love is usually the only time we notice that we give up some control, and it's also usually the only time we try to do anything about it. Most often that thing is to ruin whatever love we have. We are so afraid to give up control of our to heart someone that loves us that we end up giving control to insecurity, or to people that are even more insecure than we are.

The stars want to remind you that one the thing you control is control itself. You can work at recognizing who and what is trying to wrest control and power from you, and you can put a stop to it. If you are in control of how you feel about yourself, of how you want to be treated, of what you are prepared and comfortable giving up, then you never have to worry about anything controlling you again.

When you decide to take control over what's important in your life, you conquer fear and demand better. You can't be easily swayed by bullying or cajoling, or hyperbole and hollow rhetoric.

The stars want to remind you that control is yours, and you often give it away without even thinking. The stars want to remind you to think.

10/25/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:
The stars want to tell you that with most things in life, there are no great answers.
There are very few moments where everything coalesces into some perfect, life changing event. Even if they do, the exhilaration is short lived. Mundane life takes over again, and you often aren't left with anything lasting, just a sad feeling of loss and unrealistic expectations.
There are no simple formulas that guarantee that if you do the work you will get the reward. Everything from other people, the weather, or just an instance when you turned left instead of turning right will send everything reeling.
Life is a combination of hard work, small epiphanies, and a good amount of luck. It is full of frustration and mayhem and tragedy to go along with all the joy and happiness. It is setbacks and heartbreak, and some of the bad things you will have to endure alone.
That doesn't mean it's all for naught, quite the opposite, in fact. You can find joy in most anything. Just overcoming tragedy brings accomplishment. Don't downplay that, you earned that sense of pride. We meet others on our journeys out of darkness, and sometimes forge deep friendships in the process. We learn, we grow, and self esteem can be mined out of any experience that moves us forward, even a little bit.
Just the day to day grind of living affords us countless rewards. They are there if we look. The choice is ours to seek out the negative aspects of existence or the positive. Herculean efforts rarely produce huge rewards. Usually they are just a huge effort to right the ship or stay the course. You can't get everything you want overnight, no matter how hard you try.
We are so busy looking for these grand answers and storybook endings that we sometimes miss all the wonder and love we've earned. Life is about reasonable effort and small rewards, to savor and keep with you. There are no shortcuts to love or happiness or success.
The stars want to remind you that you are made up of atoms, trillions of infinitesimal particles that all go into making you. Your life is the same thing. So many small victories and defeats, risks and rewards, hard work and dumb luck, all coming together to form the arc of your lifetime.
Enjoy each and every one of them that you can, because more than likely that's all you're going to get. And isn't that enough?

10/24/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars want to remind you that you are probably still learning the same lessons you have already learned. There are many times we figure things out the hard way, or conquer our fears, only to succumb to fear or temptation yet again.

Change is not an easy thing to accomplish. Our brains are hardwired for a lot of things, and to go against everything it is telling us, screaming at us in many instances, is nearly impossible at times.

That's why we backslide. It is not because we are weak, it is because we are human. It is because we are fighting chemistry and psychology and experience and millions of years of evolution. It's a wonder we even try.

But try we do, because that is also what it means to be human. We can comprehend the things that are bad for us, or that hold us back, or that keep us from being who we really want to be. Then the struggle begins.

That struggle will be with us until the day we die. We will never be perfect, not even close. Why would we want to be? It is our imperfections that trip us up, that is true, but it is our imperfections that make us unique and inspire us to keep trying, to keep improving.

The stars also want to remind you that some of the things you might perceive as imperfections are the exact reason someone might love you passionately. The way you work to overcome the things that are not so beneficial is inspiring. The thing we don't like about ourselves is sometimes the thing that makes us human, because sometimes we get it exactly wrong and see strengths as weaknesses. On occasion, we confuse love and hatred, indifference and passion, right and wrong.

And then, miraculously, we see the light, and we change it after all.

10/23/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars want to give you a heads up. These days our lives are filled with all the noise and hyperbole meant to distract you. We are bombarded and overloaded with frightening news, half of it lies and misinformation. We are assaulted from a hundred different angles by carefully crafted propaganda, designed to keep us on edge and confused, overwhelmed so we make bad decisions and spread ourselves too thin to effectively deal with any of it.

There are too many leaks in the dike at this point, and we are scrambling not only to stem the flow of water, but to determine which are even real leaks in the first place.

So while we might be swinging blindly at phantoms when it comes to politics and social issues, most of that doesn't have an immediate impact on our nation and our daily lives.

With one noticeable exception.

We are so caught up in the turmoil of these times that sometimes we aren't hearing the people in our lives. All that worry and fear, the agitation and arguing, the energy and time now spent fighting the good fight or just trying to cope… Well, that all comes at the expense of other things in your life. There is only so much of you to go around, so it has to come from somewhere.

The stars want you to take a little time to make sure your life is in balance. If you are ignoring the people you love while you descend further down the rabbit hole of modern life, you are going to lose them. Figure out a way to get a grip on the sensationalism and fear mongering coming from both sides of the spectrum. Take a breath and realize that most of what is going on is not life or death, and let some of it go.

Maybe learn to operate like a triage unit. Handle the emergencies first and leave the minor things for somebody else. Because you can't save the world by yourself, and certainly not all of it at once. Reconnect with the people in your life, and make sure they are getting from you what they need. Do a soft reset and some spring cleaning in your mind, and realign your focus.

You're much better when you're working efficiently then when you're all over the place.

The stars also want to make it a special point to tell those of us that are in trouble that you need to speak up. Sadly, these days most people are too wrapped up in all the craziness going on to notice a cry for help. The stars see us dropping hints and sending up flares that go unnoticed most of the time. If you are in crisis, if you need someone to hear you, you might have to shout over the din to be heard.

Please, shout as loud as you can and don't leave anything to chance. It's not that people won't help you, it's that most of them need help themselves. These are chaotic and scary times, and so many of us are being lost in the cracks.

We need to be there for each other, we need to actively keep an eye on the people we care about and ourselves, lest we lose the most important things we have while chasing our tail trying to save something else.

10/22/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars want you to be aware that when someone you care about has a problem or is offended, it's not up to you to decide if it's a problem or if they should be offended. If you respect someone, you trust them enough to have a reason for being upset.

We are all often quick to judge, and we judge everything we see, whether we realize it or not. That is how our brains work, and it is an essential part of what keeps us safe and informs our actions. But it has a dark side, too.

We tend to dismiss things that we make snap judgements on, and in the process we make others feel like they don't matter. We will mock them or put them down for feelings we deem frivolous. We will argue with them about whether or not they should be offended when we should just apologize for offending them.

We will constantly push our worldviews from our perspective on them. We want a right or wrong scenario in instances where there is no clear cut right and wrong.

Granted, there are times when people's opinions or feelings aren't justified, but more often than not, they are. You just have to see it from where they are sitting. Even if they aren't justified, you're not going get them to see that by ridiculing or yelling at them.

Once again, the stars are telling you to try to see it from other's perspective. Take a little time to think about what they are going through, or what their life is like.

If you are just dismissive of the people in your life's feelings and opinions, you are treating them with great disrespect. You shouldn't be in any type of relationship with people you have no respect for, and you shouldn't disrespect people you do.

Either way, you might find that you won't have those relationships for very long. People want someone that can at least take a moment to try to understand them. They want someone that they can talk to without being being judged and told they are wrong for being who they are. They want a confidant, a kindred spirit, a friend.

They want respect.

10/21/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars want to tell you that relationships need to be in balance. In many ways, but the way they are talking about today is almost literal.

In any relationship there is a scale, and in one side is everything you love and everything beneficial about the other person. In the other side is everything you don't like, the aggravation, the lies or the way they treat you. The disregard, the disappointment, the time they let you down because of selfishness, disinterest or malice.

Most of our relationships teeter totter back and forth on these scales, never achieving a harmonious balance, but never tipping so far to the negative as to end it.

But sometimes that's exactly what happens, and everyone's tolerance is different. Some people won't tolerate much deviation from the center point. One strike and you're out. Some people will let you get away with murder but as long as the scale doesn't tip over and explode, they will keep holding on.

One sure way to screw up your friend's or lover's scale of you is to repeat hurtful behavior. All the little quirks and mildly irritating habits will have a minimal overall effect on that balance. The love in the other side counts for a lot. The big things on the negative side are the repeated behaviors that you know hurt or upset them. The things you apologize for over and over again, but don't fix. When you hurt someone else with the same actions repeatedly, you are telling them that you know you are hurting them, but you just don't care.

When you do that to someone, you erode their confidence in themselves. You make them start to resent you, and to hate themselves for putting up with it. Then you are not only adding weight to the bad side of the scale, you are taking away from the good side. The scale is in free fall.

You can't truly love someone when you hate yourself. Once someone resents the fact that they love you, you are doomed.

The stars want you to understand that if you treat people this way, you will lose them, and once the scales tip, there is no setting them back in place. If you have a serious character flaw, you should take the time to fix it now, because it will haunt you, and tip every scale you have against your favor.

10/20/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars want us all to work on being more considerate.

They understand that our lives are hectic, and that there so many demands on our time and energies. They realize that our days are filled with deadlines and stress, and we are bombarded constantly with news and hyperbole and images of mayhem. They knew we are overwhelmed with media and entertainment and traffic and responsibilities. On top of all that, we have to navigate an obstacle course of distraught and inconsiderate people. In turn, we become inconsiderate ourselves.

We are sometimes lost in our own world, weighed down by worry and multitasking. We absent-mindedly cut people off in traffic, we stand in their way in the stores, we walk in front of them and glare when they are inconvenienced by us. We yell at the people waiting on us, we tailgate the cars in front of us, and we throw up our hands if someone takes two seconds longer than we deem necessary at the ATM.

We give no thought to the people around us as we barrel through our day, so put upon and convinced that our time is more important than theirs.

We are inconsiderate not just to strangers, but to those we love. We take out our anger and frustration on them when we get home. We dismiss them or talk over them, we invade their space and disregard their feelings.

We grow accustomed to the people that are there for us all the time, and we take them for granted. We monopolize their time, then brush them off when they need us for a moment. We trivialize their needs and exaggerate our own.

We are so wrapped up in all of our own responsibilities and drama that we forget our manners and basic human decency. We neglect, we trample, we blunder our way through our lives with no consideration for how other people feel or what they are trying to get done.

The stars want to impress upon you that it only takes a little effort to be more aware of those around you. It takes less than a second to remind yourself to be courteous and kind patient. It doesn't take much to consider other people's feelings and needs and to treat them with a little respect.

Consideration for others will result in more consideration for you, and just by trying a little harder, you make life a little easier for everyone, including yourself.

10/18/17

Today’s Horoscope

All Signs:

The stars want to remind you that social media is not always real life.

True, you can interact and bond with people there.  You can find people that might become your best friends, or even your spouse. You can meet allies, you can talk to people you would never have the chance to meet in the real world.  

You also have to keep in mind that you are seeing what they choose to present. You are seeing a portion of them, not the whole.  That is why we end up getting in trouble sometimes, we can’t fully conceive of this new way of knowing someone.

We can also meet people that we decide we hate.  People who in an instant we deem horrible and not worth the time to talk to. We rage at them and call them names and block them and question their humanity, usually based on a single comment.

On Facebook, we see one specific part of each other.  We have to keep in mind that when we get into a discussion with people on social media, we are arguing about one thing.  We are both seeing one opposing belief without seeing anything else that person is about.  

How many times have you been let down when some celebrity or artist is found to have some viewpoint that goes completely against what you believe?  Meanwhile up until that moment, you loved them or their music or acting or whatever.  Because you didn’t really know them.   You knew about a few things that you felt you had in common.  

We are this way with some of our friends, too.  We have people in our lives that fit in one area, but not in another.  No one has everything in common with every one of their friends.  We have different people to fill different needs.

Keep in mind that you could find something to disagree on with anyone.  The people closest to you get into arguments with you all the time.  It you just came across them on Facebook, you could vehemently disagree with Gandhi on one subject while siding with Hitler on another.  You wouldn’t know a thing about them besides one point of view on one narrow issues.

So the stars want to tell you that except in extreme cases, don’t just write everyone off at the drop of a hat. You could be throwing a lot of good away with one bad trait, and that’s not going to help anybody.

10/17/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars think you should stop with all the bullshit.

Stop reacting to it.

Stop taking it from other people.

Stop spreading it around yourself.

Call it what it is, and refuse to deal with it.

You end up running in the same circles, over and over again. Wasting time, wasting energy, wasting life.

Let go of the things that don't matter anymore, and work on the ones that do.

There are such important things in the world that need to be taken care of, and the stars wonder why all of you are concerned about so much bullshit.

10/16/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars want to celebrate women. The stars watched humanity from its infancy, and they know we would be nowhere without women. In the beginning, the gods were women, nurturing, where birth began. They were the life givers, the goddesses of spring, the matriarchs of creation.

But soon came the gods of war, the destructors, the eaters of souls and bringers of death. Where women create life men take it.

And the women, along with those fertile gods, were regulated to the back of the line, subjugated to toil as second class citizens while the patriarchy took hold. Treated as property, with no rights and no freedom and no place in society but behind a man.

It has only been in the last century or so that women have regained some of their stature, but there is a long way to go. The stars are sickened by what they see, and by how many men still treat women with contempt or indifference.

They cannot understand why this is so, because they profess to love women, yet they still seek to keep them down, to control and intimidate them. They use them, and hurt them, and lash out at them, and dominate them, all to aleve their own insecurities and shortcomings.

They see it as strength, when really it is a glaring weakness. They are scared little children, many of these creatures that call themselves men. They not only hold women back, but like all frightened souls, they hold themselves and the entire human race back.

They are too petty and confused and myopic to understand that when they damage women, they damage mothers and wives, the very people that shape and mold humanity.

Sociopaths run the world, and the world is run by men, and the stars weep because that is a recipe for self destruction.

And that's what the long and troubled history of mankind has been since woman went from being revered to being feared. Men will find out when it is too late that the harder you try to control something and hold it down, the more it power you give it, and the bigger it will blow up in your face.

The stars eagerly await the day the sleeping giant awakens and the women of the world stand up and take back what is theirs. The stars know that they will do so not with violence, but with grace and strength and the kindness that makes them the only ones worthy of bringing life into the world.

No wonder tiny and inconsequential men are terrified and intimidated by them.

10/15/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars see how life treats us sometimes. They watch as it randomly takes everything we have. They see how it haphazardly slams us to the ground with no warning. The stars watch as we helplessly flail and just try to stay afloat when all hope seems lost and it can't get any worse.

And then for good measure, it manages to get worse.

The stars watch as we get our hearts broken time and time again, and they see us struggle with the fact that we often never find a satisfactory reason as to why. We do everything right, and the people who love us leave us anyway, sometimes in the cruelest way possible.

They see us take care of ourselves and our loved ones, only to have disease or horrid circumstance strike us down. They watch us strive for greatness and to try to make the world better, only to have it met with indifference or scorn.

They see our love go unrequited, our prayers go unanswered, our reasons for living struck down methodically, one by one. We often glibly repeat the mantra that life is not fair, but the reality of that is soul crushing at times. We are in control of very little in life, yet the things we can control are immense.

The stars also see that we still find some reason to go on if we look for it. The stars know that even with all this weight of everyday living, that we can still decide to keep going. We can learn to let go of failure and heartache, loss and bereavement. We can persevere and discover new magic and a new path out of the darkness.

Billions of us do it everyday.

Billions.

The stars know that you can too, and they marvel at us and take pride in us. Even with all that, even though we are devastated and dismantled, and have the cruelest tricks of fate visited upon us time and again, still our ragged hearts beat on.

And that is how we balance the scales against wicked chance and debilitating chaos, and find the strength to return ourselves once again to the light, and to the waiting arms of love. 

10/13/17 Friday Bonus

Today's Horoscope Friday Bonus

All signs:

The stars want to tell you that they're so proud of you making it through another week. They saw all that awesome stuff you managed to pull off, and they commend you on the efforts that didn't quite pan out. You'll get ‘em next time!

So take this weekend off, if you can. The stars will make sure that everything is still here when you get back. You can't hold the world up by yourself all the time.

Let it go for a bit, and catch your breath. Let the world turn without you for a change. It hasn't stopped yet. 

10/13/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars know that other people can exasperate you at times. They know that the world sometimes seems like it's full of people sent to make your life harder. They know that the rest of the human race can sometimes seem obtuse and incapable of understanding even the simplest logic.

They know that others seem hell bent on doing the wrong thing or taking the worst option.

But the stars want you to remember that everyone is just out there trying to survive and figure it all out themselves. They all have their own set of problems and obstacles, their own damaged psyche twisted and warped by malicious and well meaning people alike.

So give them a break now and then. The stars want you to remember that more often than not , you're the fly in the ointment from their vantage point as well.

We are all of us fellow travelers, weaving our way through the senseless pain and mediocrity of life, trying to navigate with a faulty map and a refracted view of the heavens. 

10/12/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars want you to know that you can be what you want to be, as long as you believe in it. If you have conviction, and you stick to your principles, people will respect you.

If you are faking it, or have any self doubts, everyone will see through it in an instant. That's why integrity and self esteem are so important. That's why believing in yourself and being true to who you are matters. That's why self examination and endless scrutiny of your role models and the knowledge informing your decisions is crucial. That's why comprehension and independent thinking are necessary to give you the foundation and nerve to stand for what you know.

It takes work and time and trial and error to figure out how the world works and where you fit in it, but once you do, you decide your own fate. You can conquer the world. You can fit in anywhere and hold court with anyone. Or you can simply live free in the knowledge that nobody controls you, nobody intimidates you, nobody runs your life. You stand or fall by your own accord.

That ability lies within reach for any of us.

The stars want you to know that you have that option, because if you don't take it, someone else will. As always, the choice is yours.

Choose wisely.

10/11/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars are tired. That's okay, everyone gets tired from time to time. It's allowed. Sometimes we push ourselves, even when we feel like we're overwhelmed or running on empty. At times you have no choice, there are things they need to get done, and people that need you to do them.

The stars are constantly amazed at how far we can push ourselves when we have to. They marvel at the vast reserves of energy and strength we possess. They see how we keep grinding, and come through for those who need us. We are capable of amazing things.

They are also shocked at how so many of us don't take the time to thank the people that do so much for us. It's a sad fact of life that when people are always there for us, we begin to take them for granted. Sometimes we even grow to resent them. We start to feel bad because we see ourselves as a burden, and it's easier to resent them for some vague reason than to just admit we need some help now and then. We start to compare ourselves to them and we feel inadequate, and we end up taking that out on the people trying to help us. We make it harder on them.

That is your ego chafing. The people that love you help you because that's what they do. They don't expect praise or rewards, but when you treat them like servants or take them for granted, or try to spite them, they can come to regret spending so much time and energy on you. For all their effort, they end up feeling used or mistreated.

The stars are tired, but they are still here to tell you that you better take a little time and effort to let the people you count on know that you recognize it. Make sure you're treating them well. It's the least you can do. Maybe someday you'll be the one that's there for them, and you can repay them that way. In the meantime, thank them and appreciate them now, because nothing's guaranteed.

Thank them now, or they may not be there for you next time. You'll long for the times they were so weary, yet somehow they still propped you up, still moved you forward, when they could have just as easily called it a day.

Now the stars are going to get a well deserved rest, but don't worry. They'll hear you if you need them, and they'll come running, as always, shining their light down on you. Just don't make them regret it, or one day you could find yourself lost under a dark sky, with no one left to help you navigate home. Even stars have their limits.

10/10/17

Today's Horoscope

All signs:

The stars are sad that we all lose our innocence at some point. Life chips away at it from an early age. You find that there's no such thing as Santa Claus, or that your parents are the tooth fairy. You learn television characters aren't real and life is full of bumps and bruises.

Some people lose their innocence in big ways when they are young. Their parents split up, or die. They grow up in a household of abuse or addiction. They have to deal with childhood illnesses.

Our teenage years take a heavy toll on our innocence. We learn about heartbreak and popularity and bullies and failure. Few of us make it to our 20’s with our innocence intact. It's probably not healthy to get that far and still be shielded from the real world.

At any rate, many of us that lose our innocence spend a large part of our lives trying to get it back. That's not possible. You can't unring a bell. You are never going to be able to return to that place where everything seemed easy and safe and warm.

That's okay, though. The stars want you to know that you can still hold onto the things that make life wonderful and magical. The fact that you are so far away from that innocent and naive person you were just makes those moments all the more special.

More importantly, you can use those memories and longing for simplicity to provide it for your children, and let them live in blissful ignorance for awhile longer. Perhaps that's why we have children, a selfish desire to be as close as we can to that deliriously happy state, before we learned how cruel and twisted things can be at times. It's why it hurts so deeply when we see our children struggle with even the simplest setbacks. We know where life is taking them.

The stars want to remind you, no matter how much you ache for that lost simpler time and feeling of security, it was never meant to last. It was only temporary, because the stars know what lies ahead. They knew you needed to experience that feeling for as long as you could so you had something to ground you and tether you to the world once you grew up and got down to the business of being a person.

So keep those memories safe, but let them just be that, fond memories. Now you have things to do, and maybe someday we will work it all out, and life can be simple again, and we can all find our way back to that innocence we crave so much.