Libra New Moon: The Way the World Works
In honor of the New Moon in Libra (Sep. 25, 2022, 2:54 pm PDT), I’ve decided to share some thoughts about one of my favorite subjects: marriage.
There are all kinds of reasons to marry someone. We might marry them because they are like us, or because they are enchantingly different; because they are smart or good looking or rich or because we wish to annoy our parents. I think that usually, we choose a mate from a place of such profound unconscious that it’s years before we realize exactly why we married the person we did.
On the surface, I married my Libran husband because he makes me laugh, I enjoy his accent, he smells good, and he’s practically allergic to dishonesty. (From an early relationship with a horrible, criminal boyfriend, I learned that dishonesty is the fatal flaw from which all other evil follows.) But over the years, I’ve come to realize that, like practically everyone else, I chose a partner because he possesses many qualities that I lack.
For instance, he has an instinctive feel for the way the world works. Whether he’s confronted with a malfunctioning piece of machinery, a written contract, or a question of physics, he intuitively understands the intricacies of the thing. He senses the missing bit that will make it whole, the adjustment that will put it at ease, or the mechanism by which it already functions beautifully.
It’s a Libran thing. A Libra friend is fond of pointing out that it’s the only zodiac sign represented by an inanimate object. She says it to be funny–as though Libra represents a triumph of engineering over feeling–and it is funny. But there’s a deeper truth in Libra’s scales of justice, a cool, elegant, mathematical precision to the Libran mind and worldview. It is an utterly foreign land to me. I was born with zero planets, angles, points, or major asteroids in the sign; I’m headstrong and a little rough around the edges, and I suspect my unconscious mind steered me toward someone who could help me through Libra’s finishing school.
I used to complain strenuously about the folly of trying to fill our empty spaces with another person’s gifts. Marrying someone who will supply what you lack seems like a precarious position in which to put oneself. Why not develop ourselves into well-rounded people by becoming good at math, understanding insurance policies, or getting to appointments on time, instead of marrying someone else who can do those things with ease?
I stand by all that as far as it goes. But here’s what I was overlooking, even though the proof was right under my nose: If you marry a person who is good at the things you’re not, they just might help you develop those qualities yourself.
I have plenty of faults and weaknesses. We all do. But because I’ve lived with this particular man for nearly three decades, I’ve adapted to better perform functions that did not come factory-installed in me. For example, I’m better than I used to be at critical thinking, at standing up for myself, doing simple repairs and troubleshooting, and math. I’ve become better, too, at recognizing the best in people, including myself. I more easily recognize and appreciate what makes someone unique, the excellent qualities they bring to the table, and how I might learn from them.
All of this has become part of my life because I’ve had a long, happy partnership with someone who was born knowing how to be married, how to contribute to another person’s happiness and growth. He’s shown me how to be better at it, too.
It is a flaw in the machinery of mankind that we periodically come to brink of destroying one another. We could use a few evolved Libra types on the job, trying to repair that particular mechanism. Meanwhile, here in the cheap seats, we would do well to just enjoy one another a little more, and to help each other fill in our empty spaces and work our way toward completeness. It’s the essence of relating, of peace, and of love–and in spite of the world’s many flaws, and our own, it seems this is the way the world works best.
I learned that from a Libra.
Writing and collages © 2017-2022 April Elliott Kent
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