One of the challenges and gifts of a first Saturn Return is becoming an adult member of the tribe. That means more than discovering your ideal job, ideal partner, ideal home, and lifestyle. At the core of this wonderful challenge is becoming a contributing member of the tribe. Also at the core of this threshold is creating that tribe. You can change the status quo. You can create a future, and a tribe, that you want to live in.
I know there is a lot of blame being tossed towards the Baby Boomers. That generation has left a mess for the millennials to clean up. That generation didn’t vote liberal enough and now we are faced with an even bigger struggle to wade through.
Well, guess what. Every generation is left with a mess to clean up that was delivered by the generation before. Check your history. After World War II, the Baby Boomers were left with the mess of a devastated Europe, Asia, and Africa. Economies were broken, there was fall-out (literally and figuratively) from the use of two atomic bombs. There was a massive change in societal structures because during the long years of the war, there were not enough men on the home front to keep the factories running, so women stepped up and did a damn fine job – but at the cost of a society that was built on the model of the men work in the factory and the women work in the home. I’m not advocating a return to that model. Good grief, no. I’m pointing out what a dramatic change that was, with deep repercussions in society and lingering ‘messes’ that had to be dealt with.
If that’s a little too close to home for you, check out the period after the Civil War. The war was fought for a variety of reasons – the most life-changing and society changing of them was the abolition of slavery, which had been a scourge on our national identity. After the victory, that group of 20-30 year olds were faced with the devastation of their own country, staggering loss of life (it effectively wiped out a whole swath of the younger population on both sides), and the ever-present threat of a return to slavery, if not by law, definitely in practice. They had to find a way to cope with the mess, heal it and hopefully grow kinder and move on.
Still too close to home? Jump back to the early 1500s. Henry VIII sat on the throne of England. One of his most dramatic acts for his country was pulling it out of its relationship with the Roman Catholic Church and establishing the Church of England. On the surface, it was a good thing. Guess what his children were left with? A religious war that careened between the pro-Catholic Mary who wanted everyone who wasn’t a Catholic dead and her successor, her uber-Protestant sister, Elizabeth I, who was willing to force the country to follow her path. Henry VIII’s mess took years for the next generations to resolve.
My point of this quickie history lesson is simply this – every generation gets left with a mess. Every generation is called to a higher purpose, to create a tribe that they want to live in, that reflects the values that they aspire to. We are always evolving as a species. Sometimes we blow it. Okay, a lot of times we blow it. But when you look at the long arm of history, as Martin Luther King said, and I believe with every fiber of my being, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
So I challenge you to embrace your first Saturn Return as an opportunity to not only find your ideal job and partner, but to create a lasting, loving, moving-toward-good zeitgeist in the tribe of which you are now a full-fledged member. First, scream, rant, cry, mourn what might have been. Then, like Gandalf on the bridge, slam your staff into the rock and challenge the darkness with, “You shall not pass into My tribe.”
I know there is a lot of blame being tossed towards the Baby Boomers. That generation has left a mess for the millennials to clean up. That generation didn’t vote liberal enough and now we are faced with an even bigger struggle to wade through.
Well, guess what. Every generation is left with a mess to clean up that was delivered by the generation before. Check your history. After World War II, the Baby Boomers were left with the mess of a devastated Europe, Asia, and Africa. Economies were broken, there was fall-out (literally and figuratively) from the use of two atomic bombs. There was a massive change in societal structures because during the long years of the war, there were not enough men on the home front to keep the factories running, so women stepped up and did a damn fine job – but at the cost of a society that was built on the model of the men work in the factory and the women work in the home. I’m not advocating a return to that model. Good grief, no. I’m pointing out what a dramatic change that was, with deep repercussions in society and lingering ‘messes’ that had to be dealt with.
If that’s a little too close to home for you, check out the period after the Civil War. The war was fought for a variety of reasons – the most life-changing and society changing of them was the abolition of slavery, which had been a scourge on our national identity. After the victory, that group of 20-30 year olds were faced with the devastation of their own country, staggering loss of life (it effectively wiped out a whole swath of the younger population on both sides), and the ever-present threat of a return to slavery, if not by law, definitely in practice. They had to find a way to cope with the mess, heal it and hopefully grow kinder and move on.
Still too close to home? Jump back to the early 1500s. Henry VIII sat on the throne of England. One of his most dramatic acts for his country was pulling it out of its relationship with the Roman Catholic Church and establishing the Church of England. On the surface, it was a good thing. Guess what his children were left with? A religious war that careened between the pro-Catholic Mary who wanted everyone who wasn’t a Catholic dead and her successor, her uber-Protestant sister, Elizabeth I, who was willing to force the country to follow her path. Henry VIII’s mess took years for the next generations to resolve.
My point of this quickie history lesson is simply this – every generation gets left with a mess. Every generation is called to a higher purpose, to create a tribe that they want to live in, that reflects the values that they aspire to. We are always evolving as a species. Sometimes we blow it. Okay, a lot of times we blow it. But when you look at the long arm of history, as Martin Luther King said, and I believe with every fiber of my being, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
So I challenge you to embrace your first Saturn Return as an opportunity to not only find your ideal job and partner, but to create a lasting, loving, moving-toward-good zeitgeist in the tribe of which you are now a full-fledged member. First, scream, rant, cry, mourn what might have been. Then, like Gandalf on the bridge, slam your staff into the rock and challenge the darkness with, “You shall not pass into My tribe.”
