One feature of my new life is how complex everything is. At least compared to when I was married.
I’m having the transit uranus opposite mercury. A time when your mercury gets shook up and taken into overdrive. Stressful as it is, I can’t deny that it’s giving me a new lease on life.
Mercury is the planet that rules communication, transportation & the ability to navigate our environment. It gives us mental sharpness, physical agility & the ability to multi-task. To wear many hats. To dance like a monkey while solving math problems, to dodge traffic while counting change & to talk on the phone with our boss while making a baby smile. It’s a VERY important planet.
Mercury itself does not have goals. It navigates what is thrown at us and explores what is around us. It is pure ability. It is light, quick moving energy that staves off depression & moodiness. It is an alert curiosity that makes life fun and bubbly.
If our Mercury is strong though, whatever goals we do set can be achieved. Because we are versatile, flexible, energized & competent. If our Mercury is weak, we are thick as a brick & our dreams go unrealized.
Sometimes though, we design our lives in such a ways that our mercury gets fat & dull. Cause we are constantly trying to make life easier, more streamlined and convenient. We hire someone to do our laundry, rather than hiring someone to throw pancakes at us while we do our laundry. This has to stop. The chaotic annoyances of life actually are the bubbles & our opportunity to develop a bright & buoyant personality.
A lot of it comes down to no longer begrudging chaotic difficulties but embracing them. They put the sizzle in life and can really fill you with glee when you take them in the right spirit. Imaging getting attacked by a rooster while running to catch the train… couldn’t that be fun?
If you have any of the following issues, you may want to take a month to whip your mercury into shape by making your daily life more challenging…
1. You are dumb.
2. There is no pep in your step, your swagger lacks ginger.
3. You have goals but are too lazy, dumb or incompetent to achieve them.
4. You are a depressed moody blob.
5. You are afraid to leave the house.
6. You feel your life would be better if your brain fired faster.
Mercury is about breadth, not depth. Multi-tasking, not single mindedness. Jack of all trades. Once any skill becomes familiar enough to do it on automatic, it no longer energizes your Mercury. To build Mercury, step outside your skill set to gain new rudimentary skills that are foreign to you. You need to put yourself in new situations or two situations at once.
The housewife must gain computer skills, the hacker must chop trees, the meathead must read a book, and the scholar must jerk off in the street before zooming away on his motorbike. This is how Mercury works. Breadth not depth. Jack of all trades. Keep repeating those words to yourself.
If you wish to fizzle this sizzle, here are some mercury building tips…
- Change your mode of transportation. If you drive, try walking, biking, bussing or hitchhiking. It’s best if you sell your car, so you can’t revert to it when these other transportation methods are inconvenient. Cause it’s when they are inconvenient or even disastrous that they feed your Mercury the most.
- Talk to new people. Everyone you encounter. Make sure you aren’t being selective because its especially important to talk to those who are invisible to you or outside your comfort zone. Do you see all those faceless, soulless bodies moving through the world? Take a minute to say hi to each one of them. Even babies and animals.
- Fix things. Mercury rules puzzles & problem solving, so when things break down in your environment try to repair them yourself. Especially if this is something you would not normally do.
- Multitask. Multitasking gets a bad rep just because it isn’t conducive to depth & focus but those aren’t the only games in town! Give two handjobs at once. Put on your makeup while dodging traffic. Make it through your to-do list two tasks at a time. Juggling many tasks at once perks up your brain especially when done in a spirit of fun.
- Get a part time job that is unlike what you would normally do.
- Get a dog. Slippers has definitely made my single life more complex. Walking her while carrying home my groceries and trying to figure out how to pick up the turd she dropped while the neighbor yells at me and Slippers tries to pull me into traffic. Taking her with me on dates & hoping the man won’t notice. She brings a Mercury challenge with her everywhere she goes.
- New Environments. You know that sinking feeling when you enter a social situation where you *really* don’t feel comfortable? For mega-Mercury, keep placing yourself in strange, uncomfortable environments until social discomfort loses its sting. Go places too stuffy, wealthy & formal. Places too rowdy & redneck. Young places, old places. Gyms, libraries, bars and dance clubs. Black churches, white churches, gay bars & strip clubs. Keep doing this until the sting of social discomfort loses its sting.
- Change up your technology. If you rely on technology, try living like you are in the 1800s or at least 1984. If you are a technophobe, go high tech in all areas of your life.
- Sports. Mercury is equally about mental & physical agility. So if you are more mental- like many people in our culture- find a sport to get involved with. Especially one involving complexity and agility, like soccer or tennis.
- Poverty. Mercury is all about invention & as you know necessity is its mother. If you are already super poor, embrace the challenge of finding work arounds for things which normally require money as well as finding new ways to make money. If you aren’t poor, try living off a dollar a day for a month to force yourself to be innovative.
- Communication. Change your methods, patterns & people. If you never talk on the phone, start calling new people daily. Visit people in person. Send snail mail. Video call. Meet up for coffee. The more diverse people you talk to in the more diverse ways the stronger Mercury becomes.
Thank you for reading my blog post on how to strengthen Mercury. This is the end. Please try my suggestions and tell me if you end up feeling bubbly as I do!
Below is a little video I made about the transit Uranus opposite Mercury. I’m partially making these videos to strengthen my own Mercury since it is a novel approach to communication for me.