It’s Just My Nature

A few weeks ago someone actually asked me, “What’s your sign?” My first thought, naturally, was to look at my watch and check which decade it was, but I told him I was a Capricorn. Now, I know my sign pretty much came about by accident because astrology and Kristy Swanson’s current career mean about the same to me – nothing. By the way did you hear that the star of the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a homewrecker? Yeah, she hooked up with world champion pairs figure skater Lloyd Eisler when they were on that tragic mess of a show Skating with the Stars and apparently she never let him go. He left his wife and, recently, she and Swanson got in a huge altercation and were both arrested. That’s one way to revive a career, I guess.

ANYWAY, I digress. So I said I was a Capricorn, and the guy was all “yeah I knew it.” I couldn’t exactly figure out what that meant, so I decided to do some research to find out for myself just what all this “sign” crap is about. What I discovered was kinda eerie and actually made me wonder a few things about how people interact.

According to most books, Capricorns, like me, are very logical, emotionless, have a tendency to overwork and are inclined to be insensitive. They also usually have careers like lawyers, which is funny because, technically, I’m a lawyer even though I don’t practice and you wouldn’t know it by the way I talk lol. It turned out that the books I read on the subject pretty much described me. At first, it gave me a great sense of relief to see that I’m actually predisposed to to be an over-analytical workaholic freak. Then I read some of the other signs to find out what my friends were like. Leos are self-absorbed money whores with little talent and lots of ambition – blonde ambition, to be exact. Yeah, the queen of her own world, Madonna, fit the criteria as a Leo to a T. Now Caps and Leos aren’t suppose to get along, and I looked at some of the people in my life and the ones who get on my nerves actually are Leos.

Well, all this is well and good; I mean, now I don’t even have to talk to people, I can just read a book, find out who I will be compatible with, and then just ask people what their signs are to see if we are a match. Sounds like such a great solution to so many problems, but do we really want a quick solution like that? The more I though about it, the more a realized just how scary a prospect it was to be able to analyze ourselves and be content with who are simply because of the day we were born. Although the books were right about my tendencies toward behavior, it didn’t offer a way to change and adapt to different circumstances and situations.

For example: There is that fable about the frog and the scorpion. The scorpion meets the frog on the edge of a river that the scorpion wants to cross. The scorpion begs the frog to let him ride on his back to the other side. The frog says ”but you will sting and kill me.” The scorpion responds, “ If I did that, then you would die and I would drown because I can’t swim.” The frog ponders the prospect and realizes the logic and tells the scorpion to hop on his back for a ride to the other side. Half way across the river, the scorpion stings the frog. As the frog is slowly dying and sinking into the river, he asks the scorpion, “Why did you do that? Now we will both drown.” The scorpion replies,” It’s just my nature.”

It’s kinda scary to think that free will and thought don’t play some part of personality. I don’t want to be one of those people who just answers everything with, “That’s just who I am.” I would hope that as human beings we could learn from our mistakes and try to change those things about ourselves that may not be appealing to us. I want to be able to experience as much of life as I can, and if I didn’t do something because it wasn’t what I believed in or wasn’t in my nature, I feel that I would miss out on certain aspects of life. I want to know different types of people and try to understand and learn from each individual that I encounter so that I can grow.

OK, you can all put down your bongs and patchouli oil. I’m sorry this was a little hippie zen bullshit laden. I guess that’s just my nature. BLOG HARD!

It’s a business doing pleasure with you.

– Dylan Vox