True story: I was born on December 25^th, which according to my horoscope, makes me a goat. Excuse me, it means that I am "Capricorn," which looks like a goat. People tell me that I am the one that needs to be open-minded and respectful. However, if you go around deciding that I have to be a goat because of a day of birth that I did not decide for myself, I might feel offended. Maybe I do not want to be a goat? Maybe I made a choice of what my spirit animal is a long time ago, and goat did not make it in the Top 10. We cannot go around calling strangers goats. That is weird.

Here is where I try to be respectful: if someone wants to decide to understand themselves based on the astral configurations when they were born, more power to them. However, that does not mean that everyone else should be forced to "abide" by the strange rules of horoscopes that seem flexible enough to accommodate anyone's whims.

People use horoscopes to calculate the "future," "personality," and "compatibility with others" for every person. This basically means that someone has decided that they know my future and my personality without even asking me. They decided they know my heart better than I do. It is annoying to open up magazines that have different "forecasts" for the same horoscope. If it lacks consistency, how am I supposed to take it seriously and allow it to guide me through every decision in my life?

The fact of the matter is that my future is based on my choices. I have free will, so no matter how much someone decides that they know me based on my horoscope, they dehumanized me because they decided that spending quality time was not a necessity for getting to know me.

The respectful manner for interacting with people is to stay open-minded and wait to have quality time with them before judging them. We cannot judge what we cannot understand, and we cannot understand someone based on second-hand information… like horoscopes.

Personally, when I want to understand myself and what drives me, I open up a psychology book and try to get some statistics and facts published by professionals. However, this is my choice. Just like not everyone falls into the same psychology statistic for their behavior, not everyone completely abides by the description of their "horoscope."

What is worse is when people try to use horoscopes against other people. Someone even tried to ask me if I was a Sagittarius (a horse-man-centaur-something) and I had to explain to them that my birthday does not fall into that category. Someone decided they knew my personality based on a false horoscope because they did not even know my birthday. They decided they knew who I was compatible with without my consent and my future without my consent.

See the problem?

One wrong number, and I was suddenly branded as a mythical creature that I coincidentally also never chose to be my personal spirit animal. That one did not even make the Top 25.