“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” - Mark Twain
Pandemic. War. Labor Movements. The forced establishment of boundaries, the challenging of boundaries. Boundaries are complicated. Saturn is complicated.
For some of us more inclined to people-pleasing, setting boundaries feels “mean”. If we see someone struggling, we feel compelled to help, even if it compromises other variables in our lives. People-pleasers are often manipulated by others for their own personal gain. People-pleasing is lack of Saturn externally, Saturn is instead employed internally against the self.
There’s nothing wrong with helping people, but not at your own expense. That’s a lesson from Saturn. There is also the element of our hyper-individualistic capitalist society, where resources are made to look scarce, so one hesitates to offer help to someone. At least, I hesitate. Maybe it’s rude to admit that, but I think carefully before offering help, because I don’t want to over stretch myself. I’ve been over-stretched before. Like butter scraped over too much bread, to put it like Bilbo Baggins.
My Mercury is opposite Saturn. I often cringe at memories from school, or work. The cringe revolves things I say, rather than what I do. I learn about myself from other peoples feedback. For a long time though, I couldn’t take criticism, gently given or harshly given. I couldn’t grow. All of these factors can be associated with Saturn opposite Mercury. Learning how to establish boundaries gave me room to grow. My life is no longer dedicated to ensuring the needs of others are fulfilled.
Now as a recovering people-pleaser, I see how deeply manipulation and people-pleasing is embedded into our society. Our workplaces manipulate us. I don’t care how progressive or new or techy the workplace is. They count on the fact that you need employment, and they use that to their advantage. We become work-pleasers. Workers have rights, but often it doesn’t feel that way. It more feels like we are at the whim of our employer - not wanting to disrupt anything, even if we are suffering. That’s people-pleasing, but for corporations and business.
Saturn in in Aquarius is pretty fascinating. Saturn is in its domicile. We are seeing more and more people establish boundaries - in particular, with their workplace. Boundaries that will carry us into the future, boundaries we will need to keep ourselves alive. I see this in the rise of work-from-home discourse on twitter, online communities like r/antiwork, and in the rise of unions taking place across the nation. These are boundaries that are for personal growth, the priority of oneself, rather than prioritizing the workplace. The pandemic is a stark reminder that life is short. More people are realizing that. More people are adamant that their life is worth living, and that is an attitude that I hope carries us to a place of healthier work boundaries.
Saturn will next ingress into Pisces in 2023. My highest hopes are that collectively we are able to dissolve the people-pleasing nature of our workplaces, so that we can re-build a system more cohesive to enjoying life. My fears are that we continue to over-stretch ourselves in our workplaces, not necessarily out of desire to do to but out of necessity. Realistically, perhaps something in the middle will take place.
Boundaries are hard to set. But to grow, to thrive, to make society new - we must establish the hard boundaries that will carry us forward.