I’d been so looking forward to the writers’ retreat in a rural area not far from home last weekend. It was a chance to meet new people and get a short break from some worries I was having about an elderly relative.
Unfortunately I received news the day before that my car would need to be in the shop longer than anticipated so I requested a Lyft to the retreat. It should have been easy to find but, alas, the GPS had other ideas, and we ended up stranded in a small town coffee shop instead. Coincidentally, the Mars-Pluto opposition was almost exact to the minute while this was happening (Pluto is transiting my third house of communication, writing, and local community). Mars-Pluto is the pairing of drive and power and I’d just spent an hour discovering that I had very little of either.
While waiting in the coffee shop, at first I was fretting and refreshing the Lyft app that showed no drivers anywhere. It was frustrating because I’m usually the one doing the driving and here I was having to search for a Lyft again. Then my busy daughter agreed to come and give us a ride home. I set the problem down and let myself be carried. Then coffee shop became my own unexpected retreat. I pulled out my homemade Marion Woodman pocket wisdom notebook and these words struck me as particularly apt under Mars-Pluto: “we must be empowered by love rather than driven by power.”
I also read part of The New Yorker’s recent profile of Barbara Kingsolver. It quotes her character Mickie as saying, “The point of art is to help you like your life better.” Kingsolver said she doesn’t know if she believes that is true or not.
A Jungian take might be that soul work is ultimately about seeing your life more deeply, not necessarily liking it better. But as I pondered it more afterward, a third option arose: seeing your life clearly enough that you like it better, even the parts you’d rather not look at.
I thought about my Mars-Pluto Journaling Guide, which was right there on my phone in Google Docs, but I knew I needed to finish living this day, and the days to come, before I turned to its questions.
During the drive home the sunny October skies were beautiful and we commented on how quaint the downtown looked; we had never seen it before even though we live only 20 minutes away. I was seeing local terrain more clearly and liking it better.
The worries I mentioned before caught up with me again in the days that followed, and I was glad I’d had one morning of being driven home.
If you’re working with this opposition, where is life asking you to be carried?
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In depth,
Anita Ashland
AnitaAshland.com
