Why Reading Your Horoscope Is A Concrete Sign You’re Ready To Grow

It’s natural to be impatient. 

Don’t let anyone blame your short attention span on technology or tell you that the internet and social media have provided us with so much instant gratification that we can’t sit still anymore. That we’ve forgotten how to just be. Our feelings of dissatisfaction aren’t TikTok’s fault. They go back to the beginning of time.

Eve got bored and ate an apple, or so the story says. Pandora opened that box. Goldilocks broke into a stranger’s home and laid on every bed in her outdoor clothes like some kind of sociopath. We return to these themes of looking for change, searching the unknown, trying to find that “just right” feeling time and time again.

And sometimes, because we’re impatient, because we live in this wonderful world where things are only a click away, we look for these themes in a horoscope. We suspend our disbelief for a moment and humor ourselves that all the answers we are looking for can be found in the date and time of our birth.

We want to know who we are, why we are the way we are, what’s going to happen to us, what kind of person we will become. A little self-centered at times, but how are we supposed to understand anything outside of ourselves before we understand everything that’s within?

Sometimes we can’t help combining the two through comparison. As humans, we feel the need to categorize everything, to create buckets with labels, placing everything we come across into one of them so we can feel like we know, we recognize, we understand the many things we encounter in our day to day lives. 

We create points of reference and identify where we see similarities with and differences from our own selves. Collectively, we turn these resulting profiles into archetypes. Character templates that stand the test of time. The hero, the charlatan, the damsel, the witch, the rogue. 

We want to see ourselves in that fictional other, to externalize our experience in the hopes of seeing it in a brand new light. Our strengths and weaknesses removed from the spotlight of self-criticism and basked in the softer, less glaring glow of empathy. A composition where we are able to find beauty even in our imperfections. 

So we turn to the archetype of horoscope to find that shared identity, the same way some people find their identity in a sports team. There’s as much shame in being a proud Virgo as there is in being a White Sox fan. It’s an affinity for a positive experience. For a form of entertainment.

Because at the end of the day, there’s a little of each sign in all of us. The themes and characteristics are universal. It’s fun to imagine that the change we are searching for is just around the corner or at the end of a paragraph. That all we have to do to get the answers we desperately want is to read.

Our impatience, our insatiable curiosity is a sign that we are ready for change, that we are actively seeking it out. We want answers, we want guidance, we want a sneak peek, to swipe our fingers through the frosting on the cake and get a taste before we’ve even sung happy birthday. 

We read the horoscope because it’s the thing we can do immediately in this moment. Because we can’t sit still anymore, we can’t be passive. We need that instant gratification on our way to work, our coffee break, or in that moment alone in our beds before we close our eyes and try to sleep. We need the fix now while we wait for the later. The time for the real serious work to begin. For seeking out the true experts, doing the real research, reading the book or the article with the information we truly need. 

The horoscope is the stand in, the dress rehearsal for our growth. It is the sign that says, “I’m ready for a change, I’m open to something new.” It is the beginning of our seeking. Our potential.