Star Signs

Oh, Generation Z! You are my favorite of generations — and not just because I’m one of you. Gen Z will punch a racist in the face, yell at their university administration, and then shudder with anxiety while waiting in line to order coffee. We are so chaotic in our compassion, so resolute and capricious at the same time — truly a generation of young people trying their best to solidify burgeoning paths in a messy world.

An astrologer would say this mishmash of good intentions is because all of Gen Z shares a Neptune placement. Not just astrologers, but also anyone who’s ever had to learn the order of planets in elementary school, know that Neptune is one of the outer planets, billions of miles detached from the Sun’s warmth. As the eighth planet, Neptune orbits the Sun very slowly, only making a full rotation every 165 years. Across a generation of Earthlings born in adjacent (Earth) years, Neptune doesn’t move all that much. Generation Z is defined by birth years from 1997 to 2012. For nearly the exact same set of years, from 1998 to 2021, Neptune was in Aquarius.

Neptune rules the dreams, spirituality, and insights of a generation. It’s the third eye, the cultural zeitgeist, the energy that thrums underneath this eclectic herd of people tied together by time of birth. Aquarius is the visionary of the zodiac: eccentric, idealistic, and intellectual. Gen Z’s Neptune in Aquarius brings to mind all-inclusive humanitarianism and righteous indignation at existing evils — social activists in the fight for something greater than just one.

I hear from a lot of people at Harvard that they are profoundly lonely. Which is ironic, in a Greek tragedy, horror movie, “I know this is going to happen but god, I can’t turn away and it makes me want to scream” kind of way. All these lonely people packed together like sardines, in tiny dorms and dining halls and classrooms! Befriend each other! You have demand and supply in spades, so why is the market not working itself out?

Unfortunately, we are not economics’s rational actors. We are bidirectionally afraid. We shy away from putting ourselves out there because being perceived is a whole mortifying ordeal of being known. What if you share the truest core of who you are, and other people don’t like it? Your inner child can’t take the rejection.

At the same time, we skitter off instead of reciprocating when other people allow us a glimpse into them, because what even is the socially optimal move? Do you tell your own story, supply emotional support, or quickly acknowledge the overshare and move on? What if you’re moving too fast? What if they didn’t even mean for you to see that part of them and now it’s just awkward? There’s just so much that can go wrong.

It’s “break up with your significant other” season.

To be fair, every season at Harvard might as well be “break up with your S.O.” season. Never before have I seen so many messy romantic relationships (and breakups) than at Harvard. Stifling sobs in communal bathrooms, second-guessing every amorphous figure at a too-dark party, running away to New Haven. When it comes to the ends of relationships, Harvard students run the gamut of every unfortunate response to trauma.

Breakups suck — you don’t need me or astrology to tell you that. Often, when romantic relationships end, we think the issue is us. That we did something wrong. That we didn’t try hard enough to make it work. That we are simply unworthy of love.

Good news! If you have — given up trying to explain mechanism design to your problem set group while studying for midterms, argued with your significant other about the disproportionately low effort you feel they’re putting into the relationship, or trekked all the way to the Quad to meet a friend just to get a text saying the evening van just dropped them off at Eliot courtyard and they can’t wait to see you — lately, it’s not your fault. Mercury’s in retrograde.

You’ve probably heard someone offer these three undecipherable words as an explanation for anything that’s gone wrong in the last month. So what do they mean?

In astrology, Mercury is the planet of the mind. It rules thought and communication; it dictates how you learn and process information and how you spit that information back out to other people. It’s an everyday kind of planet, constantly moving in a tight circle around the Sun of you.

Every year, like a distorted New Year’s resolution with none of the cake or confetti, I compare myself to a dreamscape version of myself. Dream Christina has a nice singing voice and kind eyes. Dream Christina knows how to keep a conversation going. They are the kind of cool that makes people want to stop them on the street and ask where they got their fit.

In reality, I have an okay singing voice, okay eyes, an okay ability at facilitating conversation, an okay sense of style. In reality, I have no fewer than six different documents listing life goals, action items for the semester, bucket lists, skills to learn, things about myself to fix, and ambitions so deep they’re almost shameful.

I want to change. I want to grow and blossom and flower. I want to be a better person, whatever that means to me at the moment.

Today’s horoscopes are as follows. Cancer: This is a period of restlessness and change. Don’t forget yourself and where you came from. You are stronger than the waves ahead of you. Virgo: Remember that the people you love feel the same for you, even if it doesn’t always feel like it. Leo: You are meant for great things. You will achieve what you set out to do this week.

If any of that made you groan and roll your eyes, you’ve got company. Seventy-one percent of adults in the U.S. don’t believe in astrology. The reasoning for this disbelief varies. Some think horoscopes are purposefully vague, generic statements designed to make naive foals go, “Oh my god, so me!” Some think star signs are fun but ultimately braindead trivia for the backs of gossip magazines. Some simply don’t think the planets above have anything to do with the rocky molding of a personality on Earth.

I used to be one of these people. As a prospective Computer Science concentrator, I was ferociously proud of my perceived utter rationality. With my objective, analytical mind, I quickly denounced astrology’s resonance as mere law of large numbers.