Here's a little scenario to illustrate the point. We might call
this the Noble Soul syndrome.
AQUARIAN TO FRIEND: I'm fine, thanks. A little tired, that's all.
It was an awful lot of work moving into the new house, and getting
the kids ready for their new school.
FRIEND: But last time I saw you, I thought you said you didn't like
that house. You weren't going to take it.
AQUARIAN: Well, it's much more convenient for John's work. It only
takes him twenty-minutes. With the other place, it would have been
an hour and a half commuting.
FRIEND: But what about you? You said you hated the neighbourhood,
and the shops aren't very nice, and
.
AQUARIAN: Oh, I was just being silly. Selfish, you know. I'm
terribly selfish like that. I should never have gone on like that.
John always Comes First. After all, where would I be if I always
thought of myself? My mother always told me never to be Selfish,
it's the worst thing you can do. A Good Mother always thinks of her
husband and children first. No, the house is just right for
John.
This is very noble. Truly good. But our Aquarian, if you see her a
few years later, is liable to be a little messed up. She might be
on Librium, to keep her nerves from acting up. She might have high
blood pressure, or have developed a few nervous habits like a tic,
or compulsive cleaning. All that natural aggression has been
submerged. And when you track her into old age, she's had to become
incredibly rigid to keep all that stuff repressed for so many
years. She's gone cold by then. That's when Aquarian goes fanatic.
When years and years of being Unselfish and adhering to Right
Behaviour have made a dog's breakfast of heir spontaneity and love
of life.
Aquarians often has a wonderful gift for logic. He can discuss
things reasonably, rationally, and often brilliantly. So when you
challenge him - or present an emotional grievance - he has it all
sorted out to begin with. He can work it out rationally,
analytically. He's got all the answers. He has a gift for analysis
of human temperament - many Aquarians reach prominence in the
psychological field - so he can tell you exactly what your motives
are, why you said this, why you said that, and what the solution is
to the problem. It's so neat and pat it makes you swoon with
admiration. The trouble is, there's no room for any emotion in it.
I've had discussions with psychologically 'aware' Aquarians who
have taken an interest in the whole realm of the human psyche. They
can list their complexes, use all the latest jargon, draw the
latest psychological maps. The human being like an airplane or an
automobile or a well-constructed society, operates on certain basic
principles. There isn't any room for chance, or fuzzy edges.
Emotion has fuzzy edges. People to Aquarians are mechanisms -
wonderful, divine mechanisms, but nonetheless mechanisms. And that
well-read Aquarian who knows all the latest about the psyche, while
he can discuss it with brilliance, often doesn't know anything
about himself at all. It's because he doesn't know what he feels,
what he thinks he ought to feel, what he thinks he should and
shouldn't feel, and he thinks you can think about what he thinks he
feels. Confused? You should see the Aquarian in the midst of all
that. Simple phrases, like 'I love you' or 'I hate you' or 'I'm
bloody angry with you' are very difficult for him.
The fact is, Aquarians have very deep and complex emotional
natures. It isn't that they have no feelings. It's that they are
often frightened of their feelings. Aquarius is a true air sign.
What can be understood by the mind is safe, because you can reason
it out. What can't be understood is often relegated to the realm of
the 'imaginary' or the 'emotional', dreaded or simply reasoned out
of existence. Is there room for any romance in this formidable
temperament? Yes, but it's usually unconscious. Aquarius is often
very embarrassed and awkward - you might even see him blush - when
the subject turns to romantic matters. This is the fellow who, out
of sheer embarrassment, will neglect to give his woman flowers
during twenty years of marriage. He often can't understand the need
for flattery, compliments, sentimental displays of affection.
Everything has to have a reason. He may love deeply - but he won't
show it very often, and especially not in the ordinary little ways
that make a love relationship so enjoyable. He is capable of
sacrificing his life for a loved one. But sometimes the loved one
feels like saying, 'That's very nice, but flowers would have said
it better.'
I once knew an Aquarian man whose wife left him after six years of
marriage. They had two children, a large house, an opulent
lifestyle, and he was extremely successful in his profession. His
profession involved quite a lot of travel, which meant long periods
when his wife was left alone. It never occurred to him that she
would mind this, because it never occurred to him to ask. He could
handle it; he simply clicked off on those trips, something
Aquarians seem to be able to do with ease. They simply shut down
shop and shift to another department. He also found it extremely
difficult to show his wife any affection in ordinary situations. To
him, this was superfluous. He had proved his love because he had
married her, fathered two children on her, took care of her, and
was reasonably faithful to her. During one of his trips, she ran
off with a friend, who had won her starving heart by writing her
love poetry. My Aquarian client was beside himself with shock,
grief and bewilderment. 'She kept telling me it was the love
poems,' he said, baffled. 'Why? What difference does it make if
somebody writes her love poems?'
His wife never came back. To this day he still finds it impossible
to comprehend that the poems were to her a symbol for something - a
recognition that she had feelings, that she was romantic, that she
had a heart. To him, it was terribly unreasonable.
I have seen a number of Aquarian marriages go this way. When it's
the reverse way around, with the woman an Aquarian, there's a
different base. There the complaint of the man is often, 'She's so
good, so fair, so self-disciplined. She makes me feel irresponsible
and selfish.' And sadly, the unspoken part of this is that she can
be pretty boring. Anybody who's unselfish and highly principled all
the time will drive a lesser mortal into some fairly nasty actions,
just to get an ordinary human reaction.
What, then, can Aquarius do? Perhaps realize that his abstract love
of humanity should extend to include himself and his loved ones.
Often this simple point eludes him. Generosity of feeling toward
oneself and those close is part of the ideal of love; often,
Aquarians miss it. Some of the zodiacal signs have a knack with
personal relating; others don't. Aquarians has perhaps more
difficulty than any other sign, because he often has so little
sense of the 'personal' - including his own 'person'. Aquarius'
ideals often mean too much to him because he hasn't got a sense of
himself. We can, historically, make excuses for the Lincolns and
Edisons of the world. In retrospect, we're glad they were such
personal failures, because their humanitarian achievements were
proportionally great. Perhaps that's Aquarius' role in the human
family. But with a little balance, if you're not a Lincoln or an
Edison, you can be a human too.
