Elsa, you’re right that not everyone’s life automatically turns out well… but everyone’s life has that potential, if they’re willing to do what needs to be done. Our choices in life really do have long term effects.

That said, I have to believe that no matter where someone is in their life that they always have the choice to move in a new direction, without exception. The benefit of those changes may not happen over night, but they always show up.

Saturn return or no, what comes to mind when I think about this is a line from Stairway to Heaven — “Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on.”

Do people really listen to the “sound of Saturn” though? Its these crucial developmental times like the Saturn return where fate takes a direction. There are plenty of choices including avoidence of reality. The lesson will be about something at the return. I guess some people miss out on their teenage rebellion stage of development to only experience identity issues later in life. The missing bits will emerge at some stage.

kingsley

Gemini with Leo rising says: TALK ABOUT ME ALL YOU WANT, I’LL TOTALLY EAT IT UP.

When you mentioned that about the Saturn return, it really struck home for me because of the horrible situation that happened last year… which inspired a fit of depression that you later helped me out with on this blog. I thought about that situation, and about the idea of those two alternatives… getting another chance 28 years along, or never getting one. In this particular situation, I just couldn’t see a good outcome. Heck, if I got another chance a week from now, I couldn’t see one.

And that fits with what you’re saying. This is something in my life that may very well never sit right with me. It’ll always be a scar. It may become part of me, but it’ll be a part that aches when it rains.

But for some reason it just confounded me that I couldn’t see a good outcome anywhere. You’re right. The things we do, they matter. It’s possible to do a wrong thing, that you feel for the rest of your life. In fact, I’ve gotten into a habit of looking for people who have one or two of those in their lives… when you find someone who has really screwed up massively, and who has incorporated it into an otherwise happy life, that’s a person you can learn a lot from.

Heather M, I stated my case and stand by it. In theory all things are possible. In reality what happens is typically way, way beneath what is possible in theory. I have been watching this a very long while.

I would allow for the anomaly though but anomaly means an actual anomaly which is very, very rare thing.

Nice, Ewinbee! I love that.

Elsa, can I be the anomaly? . . . at 36? Maybe my SR got delayed somehow? Forgot about me for five years?

Well, I guess time will tell, eh?

I feel like I certainly learned my SR l, although some of my methods may have been suspect. Maybe I did skip over part of it. Or maybe I just got a B instead of an A.

*****
ewinbee~

>In this particular situation, I just couldn’t see a good outcome. Heck, if I got another chance a week from now, I couldn’t see one.

Yes. I understand not being able to find a good outcome anywhere. Especially in relating it to the now. That is very much my perspective as well.

In the middle of my 1st saturn return and in very poor health - I lost my job, my income, my ability to work at all, my home. Interestngly enough I did all the supposedly ‘right’ things the years before - I got highly educated, was very successful, found a nice man and everybody thought I had it all together. Saturn comes along and WHAM, all in shambles. I think what my saturn return is about is responsibility for your life -no matter what circumstances-, in my case at this moment ‘give it to god’, since it’s the only thing I can do. And it’s the most difficult thing too for someone who is used to work and achieve all the time. Its about learning that life gives and takes, just deal with it, and take responsibility for whatever comes up. There is no arguing with reality. I do hope my life will get back on track after saturn eases off - I think I am learning these lessons, but who is to judge you learn them well?
About the backpacking, although I get what you’re saying - I think I really grew up backpacking, and in fact learned more about life than I could have in college. Not that I would suggest you stop there…(I didn’t, those degrees just seemed to accumulate in the years after that- not that they’re much use to me now). Sadiablo- the induced coma doesn’t sound so bad

For some reason this makes me think of the blog on Elizabeth Smart and suffering in the collective. I mean here’s a girl who did absolutely nothing to deserve that and she will live with the reprecussions for the rest of her life. Is there such a thing as a reverse saturn return. Life will get better for those who have suffered undully? ( OR perhaps Saturn is about taking responsibility for situations that are out of our control)…

Amber - I’d be interested in that reference, if you know where it is!

Yes, Elizabeth Smart does sound more like Pluto than Saturn. In a way, Saturn energy is far kinder than the Plutonian kind. Saturn seems more about cause and effect. There are rules, consequences, a choice to do the right thing or not. You know this ahead of time, and if you don’t do it right you spend a LOT of time trying to fix it. You’ve got control…you just have to exercise it or else Saturn takes control.

Pluto doesn’t really seem to work this way. An overwhelming energy just takes over, and things just happen to you. You have no control, you just accept it.

it’s here: http://janetboyer.com/Midheaven_in_Pisces.html

i like to think of it as multiple chances to get things right… but you only have so long to study any one subject before something else will stand up and require you to pay attention.

…by the time saturn actually hit exact during m return things had massively improved. most of a year later i’m finding i’m implementing those lessons i’ve learned, all the time, everywhere… it’s like i squeezed through a bottleneck and in the process shed some ideas of mine which were confining me. but the next phase is already in motion… saturn’s gearing up to cross my ascendant this august. that should be fun…

I was always aware, perhaps too acutely aware, that things could go seriously wrong since junior high and that being responsible required certain short term but major sacrifices w/long term pay offs, distant pay offs you might not be able to conceive of save conceptually, payoffs that you wouldn’t see for years, w/no certainty that it would work out for that matter.

However, it wasn’t until I was older and started to learn about my family members, world history etc. that it really started to sink in that long term consequences, and so much of your life’s path, could be a result of things entirely out of your control that bear no relation to your integrity. My grandparents’ generation - so many w/promising futures - became refugees and destitute when China’s Cultural Revolution rolled around. The ones lucky enough to escape, that is.

I find many ppl’s basic assumptions about the inherent stability of the world - particularly political and environmental stability - difficult to relate to, but understand the powerful sway of N. American optimistic ideologies of continual progress and being “self made”. I do think many ppl have an unconscious faith that the world powers and values and ideologies of today will be the world powers and values and ideologies of the future. Although it seems to be becoming more difficult to ignore the incredible cost it takes to maintain the world as it is, and whether we can feasibly afford such a cost.

{{Mokihana)) I send you blessings. I learn alot from you–and I think you’re beautiful.

Maureen, Elsa

Thanks very much…I have met the wall.

And I am heading toward it..see it plain as day. I’m glad you all are here.

Phew. Very poignant, as I go through my return.

It’s our responsibility to ourselves. Make choices, deal with them. See an opportunity, take it or not, and take responsibility for what you did. And those endless chances disappearing - true, true, true. Glad I read this today.

On the work front… similar scenario, over the same time frame… I…

a) got fired (kind of self-induced, ‘asked for it’) from my first long-term, serious, adult job, which I hated and had not chosen but fallen into

b) got into a new job in a completely different field, loved it — it remains one of the high points and best memories of my work life, but it was only a contract, and when it expired, there was nowhere for me to go — no door opened up

c) because I was (am) super self-responsible and had to have an income, went back to my previous field, hoping things might turn out better this time around — but they didn’t.

Long story short, I have been trying ever since to find “my” “right” mountain, workwise, but still haven’t.