During a silent retreat, the world stops bothering you and you find yourself alone with your body and your thoughts — sounds pleasant unless you’ve done it. Most of us are running around in a flurry of activity to avoid just this – ourselves and those pestering thoughts we cannot stop.

When stimulation is reduced – no cleaning, no shopping, no laundry, no planning – what is left is food. So you examine yourself eating and learn that much of your attitudes about life can be found in your attitudes about food.

It’s good, it’s bad, it’s not enough, I’m afraid I don’t have enough protein, I’m going to make myself a steak when I get home, what’s on the  menu for the next meal, why isn’t the tea water hot enough?  . . . and everything else.

Is what life provides enough? Do you accept life as it is or want to change it?

Today while reading and commenting on a Facebook post I wondered once again why everyone expects so much out of a free service that lured us in, made us addicted and then constantly changes the rules.

Relationship, I realized. Facebook is a relationship.

Somewhere you’ve heard it – in a personal relationship, on a TV show relationship – “This is who I am. I can’t change it. You should have known that when you married me.”

We keep trying to change Facebook and it isn’t going to work. And why do we have such a deep relationship with a social media site anyway?

Food

Food for me is always the sign of Cancer, which is the cardinal water sign associated with personal feelings and which rules the stomach. Cancer is ruled by the moon.

We need food to survive but all other aspects of food – which are many – are, for me, in the moon and its reactive nature.

At a young age I had a temporary job which banned all food at the desk (a very slow torture if there is one). It was a lesson for me in why I eat at my desk – hunger, yes, but mostly boredom. Having a drink or snack is simply a treat in the midst of boredom and drudgery (especially that job).

I suppose I was lucky to have had that experience. Later I could see I also eat (junk mostly) during stress at work. Boredom and stress are the reasons for my non-hunger eating in the workplace. At home I don’t seem to have this issue.

Which reminds me of a very generous boss I once had who invited the team to his house for a Christmas party. Generous and delicious arrays of snacks awaited us which we ate but apparently in a very different way than we ate in front of him in the office. He commented that when food is put out at work it’s devoured as though we are vultures.

There you have it. At work food is a relief from something other than hunger. Humans seek activity, not continuous low-stimulation work. So we snack. And we look at Facebook.

Facebook

As the name says, Facebook is “Face.”  In the world of social media, I see Facebook as Cancer which is a place for personal connections and emotion and LinkedIn as Capricorn which is the opposite sign and a place for social consciousness and reputation. Cancer rules the 4th house and Capricorn the opposite 10th house. Both are “face” in that we are presenting images of ourselves. In the LinkedIn career site, it’s more commonly referred to as “brand.” Traditionally it was called reputation.

We seem to expect much more response to our needs from Facebook than we do LinkedIn. We seem to be in a personal relationship with Facebook where we have personal expectations. I’m sure there are people who fight with LinkedIn but you don’t see as much contentiousness on that site – we are more professional and courteous there as we are at work where our “reputation” is out in the open.

If food represents our attitudes toward life, Facebook seems to represent our attitudes toward relationship.

As an astrologer, I’ve never liked to do charts for people’s love interests. I’ve never been able to put my finger on why. I know that when I look at a chart I’m seeing someone as an individual. But the person who has asked for the reading is reacting to information in a certain way looking for good, bad or the “reason” for someone’s “faults.” It’s always felt like pressure.

I understand that as a person and astrologer who looks at others from my vantage point. But as an astrologer, there is no good or bad chart, no faults per se, just energies that can play out in a myriad of ways. I can see, of course, if you have a lot of fire and your partner earth, you might not get along because for you the earth is boring and routine and for the earth you are too much energy and possibly overbearing. But it’s only fault to each other, not fault in an objective, absolute sense.

Facebook, according to Wikipedia, was founded February 4, 2004 with sun in Aquarius and moon in Cancer. Interestingly, the United States has sun in Cancer, moon in Aquarius so it’s very American in the Cancer emotion and Aquarian detachment – vacillation between personal emotion and abstract reason.

Sun and Neptune are conjunct in Facebook’s horoscope showing the allure of personal expression. Facebook provided the ancient Greek and Roman forums for us to express our thoughts to larger numbers of people than possible as individuals without media companies or published works.

Like any chart, the energies are symbolized but Facebook is not a person, it is a combination of bytes of data floating through space (a very sun/Neptune trait). Facebook as a person is a sociopath who cannot feel and can only make use of us – in this case by triggering our reactions and profiting from the resultant behavior data.

So why do we want to change a sociopath? Why do we complain about Facebook and continually return?

Facebook triggers our Cancer/moon reactive natures. But like all media, it is not real so we are reacting to our own thoughts and emotions. Great novels create this same effect but, generally, with coherent and meaningful themes. And Facebook triggers these emotions by people we consider our friends.

As with relationship, we can’t change Facebook; we can only change ourselves.

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Mark Zuckerberg, Our Friendly Overlord