> setting intentions
You're tuning into Cheers, a newsletter made by Tiffany Xie. This week: birthday wishes and astrological omens.
Hello friend,
As a child, my parents would organize birthday parties for me and invite my friends, and we would go to the arcade or waterpark or have sleepovers or get our faces painted and sometimes whack a piñata. At some point growing up, the parties started receding and my birthdays became mostly like regular days. I went to work or did my laundry and sometimes my sisters baked me a beautiful cake. But the lack of an event, of my friends gathered around me, created a kind of void.
The last few birthdays, I’ve been away from home in other cities, and I’ve been awkward and haven’t told people around me when it was my birthday. I went to work as usual and spent most of the day half-hoping that someone would know, somehow, that it was my birthday, although how would they know if I didn’t tell them? I don’t want to be self-centered about my birthday, but I do want to celebrate myself.
I’ve been rethinking astrology again. I don’t really believe in horoscopes or astrological analysis as “truths”—astrology is a pseudoscience—but I do believe that astrology is useful as a way of organizing one’s sense of self. I’ve been reading a lot of Alice Sparkly Kat, a Chinese American astrologer, and in particular I’ve been thinking about her blog post on birthday magic:
Treat the things that you do on the day of your solar return symbolically. Remember—this is a day during which you celebrate the want over the should. If you want to rest more in the next year, then take a nap. If you want to make more money, ask to get paid on that day. If you want more pleasure, then feed yourself well.
I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions because I think the pressure of making new habits makes it easy to give up. But there’s something more gentle and realistic about setting intentions—of spending time with friends if I want to build friendships this year, of writing if I want to write, of eating well if I want to eat well. I hate the commodification of self-care culture, but I do believe in taking time to ask what I want from myself.
My birthday is this week, and I’ve written a little list in my phone of the intentions I want to set. I think it’s a good time to think about my desires. Our house flooded a couple weeks ago and I’ve moved into a new house in a different town. There has been a lot of anger, sadness, anxiety, sleeplessness. I have a new stuffed walrus and a jasmine-scented air freshener. In a few weeks, I’ll fly back to the U.S. and get ready to move and start school.
In this week’s edition of Free Will Astrology, Rob Brezney writes:
“I remember wishing I could be boiled like water and made pure again,” writes poet Jeffrey McDaniel. Judging from the current astrological omens, Gemini, I think you could be made reasonably pure again without having to endure an ordeal like being boiled like water. Do you have ideas about how to proceed? Here are mine: 1. Spend 15 minutes alone. With your eyes closed, sitting in a comfortable chair, forgive everyone who has hurt you. Do the best you can. Perfection isn’t necessary. 2. Spend another 15 minutes alone, same deal. Forgive yourself of everything you’ve done that you think of as errors. Perfection isn’t required. 3. Spend another 15 minutes alone. Imagine what it would be like to unconditionally love yourself exactly as you are. 4. Spend another 15 minutes alone. Remember ten amazing moments that you enjoyed between ages five and 13.
I’m not really after purity, but I think there is merit to wanting a reawakening this week, an attentiveness to tenderness and joy.
Cheers,
Tiffany