My eyes glaze over the constellations that engulf my phone screen.
Your Monday Horoscope.
The words are plain-looking, but they manage to grab my attention. Kind of. Enough that I start scrolling down the page, scanning half-heartedly for the word “Aries.” I find it, I read the paragraph beneath it, and I continue crunching my Cheerios. I yawn a bit, and I move on to the next brightly colored page on my phone’s screen.
See, reading my horoscope has become a part of my daily morning routine. It isn’t something I necessarily look forward to, or even something that I have any real emotional attachment towards. It’s just something I started doing...and haven’t really stopped doing. It’s a habit. And that makes sense, because, well, it’s addicting. Addicting, but harmless…
Right?
Nah.
Don’t get me wrong -- I’m all for seemingly meaningless habits that don’t do much for you. Okay, not really. But even if I was, I realize that that’s not the type of habit reading my horoscope every day has proven to be. This morning ritual is one that inevitably affects my perception of the day that follows. And that’s unhealthy.
See, whenever I read my horoscope, I start to place it within the context of my life. Work, family, friends -- all generic buzzwords thrown into the paragraph of so-called astrological wisdom suddenly become specific and meaningful after I’ve read them within my horoscope.
And sometimes, this extra, self-assigned meaning evokes emotion – be it happiness, sadness, or stress.
But why?
All a horoscope really does is give me a new filter through which to view my current situation -- whatever it may be. But it isn’t a filter that makes anything clearer. It’s simply one that adjusts the way I see the world…almost (or maybe completely) arbitrarily.
Every ‘scope, no matter how much I remind myself of its insignificance, shapes me in some way. Every Aries characteristic I read affects my perception of myself and my characteristics – even if only for a short period of time. The problem is that these fortunes and characteristics don’t have merit. They’re vague, usually extremely general ideas. Honestly, they’re kind of random.
As a person who appreciates logic, my affinity towards them baffles me. Perhaps, some part of me finds solace in the theory that horoscopes seem to prompt – one that claims the future is pre-determined and “fortunes” are just early screenings of it. But, c’mon…a theory is just that – theoretical.
In the long run, it’s hard for me to do something without wondering why I’m doing it. I like to take on different routines or habits, and am curious about which ones help me – those are the only ones I try to continue doing.
So, I guess this was a long-winded way of promising myself that until I’m able to properly justify the purpose of horoscopes, I’ll stop reading them.
Hashtag no filter.
