I’ve never been sure how much I believe in all that astrological stuff. But when I saw a bunch of people posting about Mercury being in retrograde until July 23, I took note!
Sure enough, pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone wrong during the last few weeks. Some of it was simple stuff: flights delayed, missed connections, broken eggs, computer stuff not working right. There’s not much you can do except get to work and try to fix as much as you can and move on.
I’m usually a tremendously positive person, and I go into everything thinking that it’s all gonna be OK. The last few weeks, pretty much nothing has gone the way I wanted it to. Everything has just kind of…sucked. Everything has just been…harder. Some things refused to be fixed. And at some point, you just have to say…let it ride. The universe has to sort this out on its own. Things will get better.
And yes, during this time of Mercury retrograde, the alley fig tree got trimmed down to a nub again by the mean gardener. It happens, there’s not much you can do about it. The little guy is already sprouting new leaves. Soon, he will be a couple feet tall, and inspiring people all over the world with its tenaciousness (I get asked about the alley fig tree more than anything else). But the fig tree story would be meaningless if it were just allowed to grow. The thing that makes it interesting is the fact that it keeps getting cut down, but it just refuses to quit. It won’t die. In fact, the more it’s trimmed down, the more it keeps coming back. It’s a stubborn little son of a bitch, just like me.
And that’s the lesson of this Mercury in retrograde season over the last couple weeks. I will be super glad for July 23 when this astrological condition passes. I won’t complain when things start going my way again. But I’ll always have that memory of being cut down, like the alley fig tree, to inspire my inner self to find the strength to keep going.
And that’s about all the hippie stuff I’m good for. If I keep going like this, I’m gonna have to go out and buy incense, and I’m just not gonna do that.
