My great-grandfather, who comes from somewhat of an ambiguous scientific background, always kept me engaged in astronomy. That is, the study of space and the moon(s) and stars (as stars truly are, masses of incandescent gas) and their relations- you get the idea. When I was a kid, he would print articles out for me about Mars and the moon and all the drama of that which was, quite literally, lightyears beyond my understanding. There was a time in my life where, because of my NASA calendar and sporadic updates from Great Grandpa, that I was, for my age, perhaps a little more informed on the stars than most kids my age.
Then I got older, and kids that really enjoyed astronomy studied physics and got smarter than me, and other kids had this information about the stars that I had never heard of before in my life. They speculated, or, some might say knew, that the stars affected our behavioral patterns to such a degree that if we were in fact born in a particular time of the year, we would align with some particular set of traits. Fascinating, I thought, this is beyond the astronomy I had learned. Only it wasn’t astronomy, it was astrology.
In order to understand astrology, one has to understand that nothing in this universe makes any amount of sense and never will. This is because no actual piece of scientific evidence really backs astrology, and never has, so whether you’re a logic-driven Gemini or a free-thinking Leo, there’s not any amount of thought that really goes into the world of the zodiac, or the information it provides. Sure, there are theories based on science, the same as there are theories based on ideas such as Mercury going into retrograde and ruining all of our lives (which it did, evidence being the misery I endured within its retrograde). However, the theories are merely theories, and it's mostly a “spiritually driven” field of, paradoxically enough, “science.”
Astrology’s contrarians are often concerned with its theories on who-gets-to-be-what under each sign because they often speak in broad generalizations that you can take upon yourself to be about you, or perhaps only a little about you, regardless of who you are. For example, I am a Pisces, and Steve Jobs is a Pisces, and although I’d like to think that our minds work in even remotely similar ways, I know such is not the case. Pisces might be the creative type, I may be a creative type, and some might label Steve Jobs as the creative type, if not the genius type. Unfortunately, to think of us as a family under one astrological sky is incredibly hasty.
I don’t want to believe that’s true, mostly because it’s ridiculous, but also because it feeds my already ENORMOUS post-millennial ego. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that, despite all the science or lack-thereof that proves against it, and all of the doubt that I have in my mind and all the evidence that anything said about any sign is nothing but a bunch of broad descriptions that, for the most part, could fit any individual person, I’m a goddamn Pisces and I know it.
I’m not proud to be admitting this. I don’t want to see the world as a series of interactions made with the impression of some metaphysical principle that because I’m a Pisces and she’s a, whatever, that we’re going to hit it off. However, my life has become a TV sitcom called, “Life With Pisces” whereby I, the Neil Patrick Harris of the series, find myself in situations that are distinctly idiosyncratic to people born under the finest, most sensitive water sign of them all. I find that the way I interact with other Pisces is like talking to myself in a mirror: a series of apologies and apprehensions followed by more apologies.
I know that I’m the creative type 100% of the time, and that for every decision I make and everything I say, my emotional sensitivity is screaming in my ear, assuring that I do the right thing. I was born by the water and my name means "Of the Sea," i.e. my name literally has Pisces written into it, and I hate it. I have so much faith in science, and so little faith in the spiritual world because while I’m incredibly sensitive to those around me, my movie-star-sign is Woody Allen so I’m severely skeptical. I don’t like that my boyfriend and I interact in the way that a Pisces and Scorpio should. It’s disheartening to find that I’m somehow less unique than I previously thought myself to be (there’s nothing like becoming a part of a statistic), and also because I just really don’t want any of this to be true.
A key flaw of a Pisces is literally just being “sad.” When you Google “characteristics of a Pisces,” the most trusted website (we know this because they have an app!) tells you that, among other things, the Pisces is characterized, among other things, as sad! Which is actually really really sad! I feel like I have to believe it because I am often sad, because I’m so sensitive or because I have too much empathy, or because I really wanted to go swimming. Astrology is all crap, but it’s real crap, just like taxes and the government and other things we don’t want to understand but go along with anyways.