How Thinking in a Box Cuts You Short

…And Erases What Truly Defines You!

What a relief! Back in school, I had typing as a subject. The outdated model I practiced on was a Triumph typewriter. Typing on that machine felt like a moderate workout, and the number of calories I burned far exceeded the number of letters I typed. 

It’s hard to believe that top typists at the time could manage 300 keystrokes per minute on such machines. Flawlessly, mind you, as there were no correction programs.

Back to the relief! It came when personal computers finally found their way into offices and homes. With increasingly advanced software, typing finally became a pleasure for me too. No more workouts! But the next problem was already looming on the horizon, like Venus at dawn. Because soon, you had to declare your allegiance:

Are you more of a Mercury/Jupiter type, a fan of MS-Windows, or do you belong to the Venus/Saturn guild of Steve Jobs and call a Mac your own?

This was the case back then, and it still is today! Whether you’re dancing your fingers across an Apple-designed keyboard or tapping away on some off-the-shelf Windows keyboard makes all the difference.

The question isn’t which device is better or worse. It’s about the person operating it. Because your choice is a matter of worldview. Your worldview! A question of Venus/Saturn versus Mercury/Jupiter!

You think that’s an exaggeration? Okay, then let’s compare Mercedes drivers with BMW drivers. Or how about Instagram and TikTok users (forget Facebook! That’s for silver surfers! Moon/Sun!)? Want more? Political party, country of origin, skin color, gender, religion, body weight, freckles, clothes…

Even if we like to deny it: We love putting people into boxes! And whether we want to or not, these boxes are big and very, very deep! We tend to unpack a whole load of traits and characteristics when one of these boxes is opened. Before we know it, we lose sight of what makes us human: uniqueness.

When our perception of uniqueness goes down the drain, so does our understanding that no one experiences or understands the world in the same way as we do. Creativity and versatility risk being sacrificed to herd mentality and black-and-white considerations when we engage in thinking within, instead of out-of-the-box.

Astrology as Light Fare

Mercury/Jupiter clearly stands for MS-Windows, and Apple’s iOS is undeniably Venus/Saturn. Box open, box closed. Your zodiac sign is Libra and your ascendant is Capricorn? Got it! Box open, box closed.

Astrology, when properly learned and practiced, allows us to understand life and recognize with foresight what unfolds for whom and when, and what can be shaped from it. That’s a pretty ambitious program and requires us to define what truly makes each of us (and every situation) unique: individuality!

Astrology as light fare, where we label MS-Windows as a Mercury/Jupiter combination, likely tends to reduce you and me to some combination of planets and stars. At best, this is weak entertainment, and at worst, it’s questionable pseudo-psychology. Astrology has a completely different purpose, and for that—sorry to say—it requires a lot more!

Astrology: Your Planning Tool and Wisdom Booster

The fascination with astrology is as old as humanity and is based on an art reserved for us humans: using our perception of the environment to infer conclusions. An example: The wind is picking up from the west, so I know the weather is about to change.

Astrology masters this game of perceiving phenomena and inferring corresponding conclusions in the realm of planets and stars. The conclusions drawn from their dynamic interplay relate to our lives and how they unfold. It’s logical that this also informs how we should sensibly behave to best shape our happiness and build our success.

Experience can help us become smarter. But this smartness doesn’t pay off if we reduce our life planning to these experiences, because then we end up—surprise!—back in the box!

Astrology isn’t built on the past, nor does it conjure the future. Rather, it transcends time and space by not forcing the ongoing development of events into a generic framework but instead illuminating them from an individual and personal perspective. Your perspective!

This brings us back to uniqueness. Just like every person and every situation, every horoscope is unique. From the interplay of many factors—planets, stars, and constellations—a picture emerges that is as individual as you are. 

It’s no surprise, then, that such a picture—what we call a horoscope—can say more about you and your life path than you might imagine.

The goal of astrology is to serve as a blueprint for healthy self-reflection and as a planning tool, so that, with all your experience, you can shape your future with foresight and vision.

…no boxes, just astonishing uniqueness!