Children are little time wasters. They devour days, weeks and months with their cute grins, amazed eyes and enjoying the most ordinary details. They enrapture you with their innocence and need. They steal your drive and rearrange your ambition, and suddenly you’re determined to achieve one thing: make them smile at you. Or better: giggle. The ways I’ve jumped, jumped, wiggled, wagged and clawed my way across a room to chuckle.
Nothing has made me more aware of time than having a child. Every moment away from them is a precious potential where I can take care of my life, work, needs and myself – and at the same time, every moment away from them is something I will miss. A new sound, or look, or laugh. God forbid, first steps.
But life still demands of me.
A friend once told us that all time is borrowed time once you have kids. Of course, I need and want to do my own thing, live my life, go on a business trip, attend the event, etc. But it is now time that I have borrowed from being with them. And this is no ordinary time. It is a time that is fleeting, because they are still too young for school, worldly demands and their own social agenda.
Time is now divided in two. I’m split in two all the time.
The astrological Lord of Time is Saturn. Agriculturally speaking, Saturn can be seen as the reaper of the seeds sown. We can think of transits (a specific amount of time during which a planet does something that impacts our personal chart or collective astrological moment) from Saturn as master classes in time management. Often seen with a scythe, Saturn tells us what to mow, what to gain clarity on, what to prioritize and how. If we intend to be serious people, that is.
If you want to get something done, or if you want to rest, or if you want to create, or if you want to manifest something, then Saturn is your madam. Saturn demands that we set aside time. It says, “If you really want it, what do you have to say no to to get it?”
I’ve been in a major Saturn transit since this little nugget of love came onto the scene. Saturn has been in a difficult aspect (this is astro-speak for a conjunction, a square, or an opposition) to the ruler of my ascendant (aka the planet that determines the direction of my life). All that to say, since March 2023, then Saturn entered Pisces, I have been under construction. When the ruler of your ascendant is transformed (you can use the CHANI app to find the ruler of your ascendant and see if it receives transits), it looks like a detour, refinement or realignment. Saturn also emphasizes restraint, maturity, rules, scarcity, integrity, delayed gratification, disillusionment and mastery. Saturn reminds us that there truly are no shortcuts, and under its influence we are immediately held accountable for all our choices and actions.
Saturn is nothing but a reality check with a cold plunge.
Anyone who has a planet (especially the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn) or point (especially their Ascendant, Midheaven, Descendant or IC) in a mutable sign (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius or Pisces) has felt the same weight right now or will soon feel the same weight. I highly recommend checking out the Transit tab of the CHANI app to see if you are personally under such influence. And if you have something important in Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius or Pisces, but you don’t see the transition yet, don’t worry – it will happen. Saturn has been slowly transiting the same few early degrees of Pisces for almost a year (Goddess help me). So if it hasn’t really happened yet for you, just know that it’s on its way.
Collectively speaking, however, we will all be under the influence of Saturn in the coming weeks. Its lessons lie in wait thanks to a cluster of planets in close proximity. On Saturday, February 24, the Full Moon in Virgo opposes the Sun, Mercury and Saturn in Pisces – and the following week, on Wednesday, February 28, the Sun, Mercury and Saturn all come together for a rare triple conjunction. In other words, the next two weeks will be a crash course in clarification. Let this moment coach you to become exceptionally focused on what you want to accomplish, and everything you need to reject to get there.
This is not the time to indulge in our delusions.
Saturn teaches us that to be disillusioned is to be set free. Knowing reality means being able to perform miracles. To be clear, this is the only place where we can be kind and empowered.
Dr. Gabor Mate recently said: “Would you rather be illusioned or disillusioned? Would you rather have illusions about the world or see things as they are? …Becoming disillusioned is actually a good thing. The problem with many people in this world, including Jews, is that they identify with something, and when that something comes under scrutiny, they feel personally attacked. To identify with something comes from the Latin word idem, meaning ‘same’ and facera, ‘to make.’ So when you identify, you make yourself the same as something else. So if I identify with Israel as the Jewish state, I am personally criticized when Israel is criticized. … So what I say to people is don’t be afraid to get disillusioned. It’s better to be disillusioned than imagined. Don’t be afraid of being unidentified. Do not identify with anything outside yourself to such an extent that you become uncritical.”
It is not lost on me that I have the privilege of writing about the time I spend with my child, in a city that is not being bombed, while my tax dollars fund the mass murder of children in a place that I have been told my entire life so is. mine simply because I am Jewish. It is a reality that haunts me endlessly. Palestinian families deserve to worry about each other in such simple and basic ways, as I have written here. They deserve childhood, parenthood, grandparenthood, aunthood, time in the park, the ability to live, grow and thrive. Instead, they are saddled with the constant and unimaginable atrocities of a violent colonial and criminal occupation – the same kind of supremacy that has dominated every indigenous population for centuries.
The reality of the situation is this: we must do something, everything we can, to bring about an immediate and permanent ceasefire, because it is the only humane thing we can do. But we can also be sure: if we sit idly by and watch a genocide take place, one day we will surely see our own too. If we are complacent at this time, we will continue to witness the death of our own humanity. This is the cold plunge reality check we now face. It’s time to realize that this doesn’t have to be our future.
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