July Outlook: As Funny as it May Seem
Smile. It’s just fate — what the hell, right?
We stand on the precipice. On one side is murky, rank, stagnant water. On the other is the brilliant liberation of the pure sun shining on humanity.
Make no mistake,our direction is not in question. We are traveling out from the decay and into the light.
But we aren’t there yet.
Before we get to the sunshine, we must pass through the rain promised last month — rain that has not yet come. We need that rain, our ground needs it, the things we’ve planted need it. We can’t make it come. We know it’s coming but there’s nothing to do but wait.
That’s exhausting — and we are exhausted. Most of us have avoided major calamity; our material needs are met and we are safe from physical and (hopefully) legal danger. Outwardly, everything is fine. Internally? It’s like a dried up lake. We’re spent, and not for lack of good reason. This is all bearable and survivable and we will bear it and we will survive it, but it’s still hard and it’s been going on a while and our energy reserves are just depleted. No need to be hard on ourselves. This is expected. How could it not be so?
Now that we’re exhausted, the next step is simple. We take a break. Much as a sleep-o-phobe like me hates to say it, now we rest.
Take all those big things you’ve been wrestling with, all the things that matter most in 2019. Set them down. Just for now, just for a few weeks.
Now we rest.
There are worse months to take it easy — the “dog days” of August probably seem slightly more natural, but July still invites leisure. The times may be unfavorable, but there are absolutely worse things than being advised to give in to that leisure impulse in the seventh month.
Of course, we can’t get carried away with this idea. Few among us have the luxury of truly blowing off the month and pausing all work. If nothing else, we’ve got jobs and families and shit. We can put those precious things down but we can’t walk too far; we can’t even afford to ignore them entirely.
No, we shall remain dedicated to at least some respectable minimum level of our work. We shall maintain our current stability in the key areas of our lives and labors. As we feel oppressed by any measure of this or from other changes outside our control, or even just this overarching exhaustion that serves as our monthly theme, we must above all avoid being broken by it.
We shall bend, but we shall not break. This is where our power is going to come from. When we’ve built that power up, it will be time to move forward into the better days promised down the line.
Responding to all of this with patient rest is the best we can do, but all this waiting is still really wearing down on us at this point. Our will and our pleasure are at odds, particularly since we’ve got a fair amount of pleasure at all times invested in the ability to exert will, which is precisely what we need to patiently avoid right now. No easy task.
But we should look honestly and objectively as possible at the weak state in which we find ourselves, exhausted and at the mercy of enemies and other malefactors, many of whom are enjoying their day in the sun NOW. Theirs will end before ours begins.
It will begin, just as the rain will come, not because of a promise or a forecast but because this is how the cycle always proceeds. If there’s any upside to this spiritually cloudy summer, it’s the fact that this state of affairs doesn’t represent the consequences of anything we’ve done or failed to do or screwed up spectacularly. 100% of this is just the turning of the wheel. We’ve got to pass through this phase of the thing sometimes and that time just happens to be now.
It’s an upside because it means no matter what we do, even if we fuck all this up and get a little beaten and broken from it and fail to be patient or modest or exercise restraint, the wheel always keeps turning and there’s another phase coming to replace this one.
That’s not to suggest we should blow all this off, cast off responsibility (come what may), and wait for things to get better. We can stumble into the rain and the light of the sun that liberates us beyond or we can strut our way there in style, with panache. That’s a no-brainer if you ask me.
The final key to doing so is incredibly simple, if perhaps not always easy: we must, at all times, through the exhaustion and apparent oppression, remain cheerful. This will even seem ridiculous at certain points, but if we do it, it’s going to pay dividends as the times get set to change over.
Be cool. Smile. It’s just fate — what the hell, right? Let’s live this shit out.
The promises on the other side are magnificent. As this month bows toward a conclusion, we’re going to find ourselves able to move forward all of a sudden, to get shit done with startling ease. At the very end, at long last, we reach the turning point. The time of darkness passes away and the light grows again. The light returns not through force or any action on our part but, again, because it’s time. That’s it. It will rain when it is time, we will be nourished, and then the sun will come — and the light will grow from there, even as the actual light of the solar year declines.
It’s a funny year like that.
You may find by the end of this month that you’re able to band together with others of similar mind very easily and naturally, and you’ll be able to do so in the open. There will be no fear of secret opposition because the times will be so favorable for our aims and our efforts.
It’s not just okay but expected that all of us feel a little beat up and worn out and just plain exhausted right now. But just hang on a little while longer Rest and enjoy yourselves. What’s promised next will prove all of this to have been worthwhile.
Like that Sinatra song, that’s life. Go live it.