How to Mercury in Retrograde

That time of the year: March. And April. You find yourself a bit angrier than usual. A bit more frustrated by simple navigation. A bit more distrusting of people’s intentions. Did my boss just sabotage me? You think. Is my girlfriend/boyfriend cheating? Did that barista just spell my name wrong on purpose?

We’ve all been there. Year after year the backwards planet Mercury rears its fated head and the world stops spinning. No one can quite tell which comes first, the retrograde or the problem, but one thing rings true: March and April bore many a problem to the everyday person.

Perhaps it has to do with adapting to the new year – the countdown into something new has ended, and it’s time to file taxes. Perhaps old habits sworn to end in January are peaking through again come mid-March. Or perhaps that vacation planned for the end of last year never actually happened, and the stress built dormant in the spine has now reached a point of climax.

Perhaps we’re all just tired. And we can’t be tired, because its only March.

Or April.

Or May.

Or June.

Mercury in Retrograde is a miraculous mixture of astrology, magic, truth, intuition — and old-fashioned excuse —that’s been curated for us, by us, in order to cope with the changes and stress of everyday life.

It’s not a coincidence that issues of communication, travel, media, and technology (the governance under planet Mercury) seem to be more present between April and March – it’s more than possible that these external, universal influences affect our daily lives (after all, if we’re all connected, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred, the intuitive soul might just be privy to Mercury’s energy some 48 million miles away). But at some point, you have to stop sculpting a scapegoat from your life and start owning it. At some point, you must ask yourself, what can I do to change what I don’t like? How can I bring forth my own peace? My own passions?

It’s true, not everything can be changed with a magic wand and a horoscope. And even though you may not be able to change every little thing that goes wrong, you can change the way you react to it.

You can’t change your boss’ alleged sabotage, but you can change the way you interact with your boss, because peace is a currency you don’t have to pay for.

You can’t change your spouse’s affections for you, but you can change the standard of love for which you deserve.

And you can’t change the Starbucks barista from getting your name wrong, but you can drink that delicious masterpiece anyway.

The point is, stuff goes wrong all the time, and if not for sake of Mercury, then for sake of something else. There comes a point in our lives where we have to stop blaming the world, and the sand, and the ‘bad luck,’ and the stars for the mishaps in our lives and start realizing that these mishaps are what keep life going.