Cultivating New Wants
A month ago I said no to a job I thought I wanted that was being offered to me on a silver platter. Something I said honestly to a kind would-have-been colleague was, ‘I’m not the same person as when I applied’. I meant it. We live in a world where we are expected to say ‘yes, thank you’ to everything that is offered to us. But the thing is, we can still express gratitude and not take what’s being offered. That’s an important distinction to make that we don’t get taught, I think. We are not obligated to anyone but ourselves.
It’s been a Tower year for me. I’m still in Tower, I think, all the time. But I’m beginning to feel like I’m in the part of Tower where new green things are starting to creep up through the cracks. I don’t really know how long it is before I’m in Star energy. Maybe I’m in both at the same time, seems more likely.
A week ago I left New York for Hawai’i again. I haven’t talked about my time here last year very much, but to say it was life-changing isn’t right. It was detoxifying. Being here allows me to connect to my somatic intuition in a way that I have never experienced before. To be embodied in a way that feels safe and good. To love and appreciate the land I’m on in a way that inspires protection and generosity. I came back to New York with a new clarity and anchoring in myself that let me know I couldn’t do the same shit anymore, couldn’t put up with the same fuckery anymore.
So I quit a lot of things in the last 6 months. I quit my teaching job. I quit commitments I thought I had to honor. I quit projecting accomplishments into the future. I quit steeping my self-worth and validation on things I could achieve and obstacles I could surmount. I was no longer going to allow myself to be depleted and exploited. I was no longer going to endure.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of personal privilege made it possible for me to do this. And yet for the longest time, even with all that privilege, I found it hard to walk away and say no. Out of martyrdom sometimes, out of guilt, out of ego hunger, out of a misplacement of self-value, out of this tortured sense of duty.
My mantra for this Uranus-Saturn Square is – I don’t have to do the things I don’t want to do, hand placed on heart.
I am and can continue to cultivate new wants, is the thing. I mean actually locating and cultivating authentic desire. I want to leave the world better than I entered it. I still want to be an educator and artist. I want to learn about how my presence in Hawai’i continues to contribute to the displacement of native people, and the long history of trauma it holds as an occupied state. I want to participate in harm reduction and land back movements. I want justice. Those are things I actively want. And I am learning that none of it has to be at the expense of myself.
The sad truth is I no longer felt safe and at home in New York. The AAPI attacks did a number on me in a way I couldn’t have imagined – I felt betrayed and heartbroken. By community, by friends, by the theater industry. And I decided I was done. Done pouring my talents and care into places that did not value me or my safety unequivocally. I chose myself. I chose to believe that I could leave a career I spent years building, a home I spent years nurturing, and there would be something else for me to discover. I don’t know if my time in New York or theater is over for good, or if this is a time out. Either way, it doesn’t really matter to me. For once in my life I am savoring the ‘I don’t know’ and saying it proudly. I don’t know.
That’s Fool energy right there, combined with the quiet wisdom and self-assurance of The Hierophant. You are your own best teacher, you are your most powerful resource.
It’s not a coincidence that Uranus is in Taurus, my 1st house of identity, and squaring Saturn in Aquarius, my 10th house of career.
I’m not my career though, is the thing. I’m not what people think or expect of me in community. I’m not my skills. I’m not my work. I’m not my talents. I’m not even my creations.
I am me, unadorned.