Of Horoscopes and Fortune Cookies
I recently began reading my horoscope again. Why not? The advice they give is obvious and I am the fool not to follow it. “Avoid dangerous situations.” “Take advantage of financial opportunities.” “Don’t contradict your boss.” “Best not to anger your partner today.” As if I ever try to do the opposite of these things. I feel the same way about fortune cookies except they come with a meal except a bit better because they often compliment me (“You are generous to an extreme”) or give worldly advice (“It takes courage to admit fault”). So why not just eat a fortune cookie each day? I can only eat so much orange chicken from Panda Express before I do something crazy like argue with my boss or throw away a winning lottery ticket.
One thing that intrigues me about horoscopes is the accuracy of the zodiac signs when it comes to personality, relationships, and demeanor. When I read a profile for Virgo, my sign, I find an eerily exact description of me. When I meet someone new and they say, “tell me about yourself,” I should just give them a link to Virgo at horoscope.com. It’s all right there, without the drama and boring stories about my life.
That website makes an observation that the amazing qualities of Virgo are in the name: V is for virtuous, I is very intelligent, R is for responsible, G is for generous, and O is for optimistic. See, if I said this it would be bragging, but read it online and it is a fact!
This morning I was reading my horoscope, and this is one of the few times I have considered not following it’s advice. It started off nice and true, “today you feel happy, confident, optimistic.” Optimistic is the O in Virgo, of course.
It goes on, “And well you should because lucky Jupiter is opposite your sign improving your relations with partners and close friends.” Lucky Jupiter means lucky me! So far so good.
“This is a good day to talk to others and get them to agree with your way of thinking,” it continues. Yeah, I am an intelligent, virtuous, responsible and generous Virgo type, and I have lots of good ways of thinking, Others want and deserve to hear them (notice that the Virgo symbol looks like it spells out “Me” - my favorite subject).
Then comes the final line of the horoscope. “Tonight: you feel cut off.” What?! Of course I am cut off! I spent the whole day trying to convince everyone that my way of thinking is better than theirs! Seems to me that they should not recommend behavior they know is going to lead to problems later in the same day. It’s like saying, “You are alert alive and brave today. Mercury is rising so you should go jump off a cliff. Tonight: you will be sore and have broken bones, or worse.” Obviously a Virgo does not write these things.
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Note: Ayurvedic medicine practitioners believe there is a relationship between astrology and Parkinson’s. I tried to read several articles on this but I was not intelligent enough to understand it. In researching the Virgo personality, I kept coming across the phrase “control freak.” Which reminds me of the humility I have learned being a “control freak” with a degenerative disease in which I am gradually losing more and more control of my body. That’s when the “optimistic” Virgo quality kicks in.
