By following his horoscope for a week, writer found stellar insights, experiences
As I was scrubbing a toilet earlier this month, I thought to myself, “Thanks, Holiday Mathis.”
Mathis, of Nashville, Tennessee, writes the daily horoscopes that appear in The Dispatch and many other newspapers, and on this
recent day she had urged me to “Be somewhat stern with yourself as you keep yourself on track with projections and goals.”
This was not the fun I expected when, as a lifelong horoscope skeptic, I decided to “live” my horoscope for a week. I envisioned taking risks and engaging in realityshow-level high jinks as I attempted to heed Mathis’ advice. This could be epic!
Instead, I was bending over a porcelain bowl, gauging whether I needed more Clorox.
Horoscopes, which began appearing in newspapers in the first half of the 20th century, take on the ancient practice of trying to forecast a person’s future based on the relative positions of the stars and planets at the time of that person’s birth.
What I found was that most days, the advice for my zodiac sign — I’m a Cancer (I’ve always hated being a disease) — was less a ticket to crazy adventure and more like a soothing dose of introspection. All I needed was chardonnay and scented candles to complete the mood as I read phrases such as “You’ll learn best when you learn less” and “Don’t wait for all the drama. Make adjustments now.”
On the day mentioned above, the full entry for Cancer was, “Be somewhat stern with yourself as you keep yourself on track with projections and goals. Put a shell around you to deflect the word, ‘no,’ then go until you get to ‘yes.’ ”
Initially unsure of what
the entry meant, I came to work and crowd-sourced the interpretation. That led to some widely varying opinions.
One colleague said it sounded like I needed to complete a few things that had been on my “to-do” list for awhile. That sounded smart to me, and I reached out to my sister, to whom I hadn’t talked in too long.
Two of my editors focused on the second part of my horoscope, suggesting it meant that I couldn’t say, “no.” One approached me with a story assignment; the other asked me for 20 bucks. I said “yes” to the first and “no” to the second.
Then there was the toilet. I had been meaning to clean our upstairs bathroom all weekend while my wife was out of town, and I kept putting it off. She was returning home the next day, so there I was, cleaning it after work and thinking ill thoughts.
I couldn’t stay mad at Mathis, though. Before I started the project, I had called her, full of skepticism, and found her both charming and disarming. Instead of getting bogged down in astrological mumbo jumbo — although she did say she consulted “the charts” — she said her job was more like offering readers a menu.
“It’s like you walk into a restaurant and there’s a seasonal treat of the day, using ingredients from every ancient culture which has done something with astrology,” she said. “I take a little from here and a little from there and put together something I think will be delicious.”
In other words, Mathis aims to please. And in my case, by and large, she did.
One entry instructed me to face something I had been avoiding and handle it. I wracked my brain, searching for some scary, unresolved issue in my life. Leaving out the small-scale regrets from my immature youth, I could not come up with any. So I feel pretty good about that.
Saving the best for the last day of my experiment, Mathis offered this Saturday horoscope for me: “Are you
ready for it? Hold out your spiritual hands, because here comes just what you need.”
Immediately, I thought back to something that happened the previous Thursday.
I was chatting with a homeless man who often sits near our Downtown office. He said he was close to getting an apartment after 12 years on the streets, and I expressed my happiness for him. I told him, “I want you to know, I pray for you — by name — every day.”
He grew emotional and said he also prayed daily, too, but he wasn’t sure he was doing it right. I replied there was no “right,” and asked if he would tell me what he prayed.
And this humble soul, so battered and bruised by life, recited one of the most beautiful, heartfelt prayers I have ever heard — simple but so eloquent. Tears welled up in my eyes.
I had held out my spiritual hands and received just what I needed. The fact that the stars were off by two days mattered not a bit.