It's an astrological term. The idea is that a "Saturn return" is that period when the planet Saturn comes back to the same place in the sky that it occupied when you were born. Apparently Saturn is connected with themes like maturity, hard work, and discipline, so a lot of these issues start cascading around you at this time. One site put it this way:
Think of it like this: during your Saturn return, you are a teenager and the planet of discipline is your dad, barging into your room checking to see if you’ve done your homework. If the assignment is complete, you are rewarded. But along with this accolade comes a warning: you can’t rest on your laurels. You must keep going to maintain your status. On the flip side, if you haven’t done the work, you still have to learn those lessons. What you’ve been avoiding catches up with you—Saturn doesn’t let you get away with it anymore; you must correct the course. For many, the Saturn return aligns with fulfilling milestones: weddings, giving birth or promotions. For others, it lines up with unnerving shakeups: cross-country moves, career changes or heartbreaking breakups. However the transit manifests for you, you can’t escape this total renovation of your life. It’s a rite of passage; it’s a time to grow up.
Another site talked a lot about challenges, tests, existential crises, and growth. You get the idea. It's supposed to be a turbulent time when your normal routines are all upset and you have to buckle down to focus on what really matters.
After I read all that, my next questions were, When are (or will be) my Saturn returns? Do these descriptions work out in practice? Fortunately there are calculator websites which will tell you just that. I found one and plugged in my birth date.
Turns out my first Saturn return stretched from March to December of 1990. I remember that time. In March I was working at a placid, easy, nothing job where I'd been idling for four years. That summer we moved to Beautiful City, where I live now; in the early autumn I got a job there, and nine weeks later I was fired. By December I was collecting unemployment and scrounging temp work. I was also just about to get a job (through one of those temp agencies) that would open up the career path I followed for the next ten years, that brought me my first management assignment, and that lifted me out of pissing away my days in placid, easy, nothing jobs. Of course I couldn't see that at the time. All I could see at the time was that I had smashed into my biggest fear in the world of work — being fired — but the sun had come up again the next day and I somehow had to find a way to move on. So yes, challenges, tests, unnerving shakeups, and growth all seemed to play a part in the story right about then.
But I'm old enough that there's a second one, too. That one was in January of 2020. Now when I look back at that time, January 2020 doesn't seem to have been unusually turbulent or challenging. So maybe the theory falls apart. Or maybe it just requires a longer view: that was, after all, just before COVID-19 broke out and I started working from home; it was the beginning of the year in which my company decided to close my office for good. (And while we all assumed the closure was related to COVID, it might not have been. For all I know the decision might have been taken back in January, for other reasons, and COVID just provided a good cover.) If it had only fallen a year later, I could have blamed by second Saturn return for my current joblessness, and for the way I am now wrestling with the question what I really want to do next. Do I even want another job? Or is it time to retire and do something different for a change?
I suppose if you are generous enough with the parameters you can make it work. Of course if you are generous enough with the parameters you can prove anything. Anyway, it's fun to think about.
No comments:
Post a Comment