On destiny, free will, and the stories we tell ourselves about why things happen.
My first words, at nine months old, were apparently “Tssat?”
What’s that?
Evidently, I’ve been interrogating the universe before I had teeth.
More than five decades later, not much has changed.
I’ve always been curious. Insatiably so. I want to know how things work, why people behave the way they do, and how seemingly unrelated things connect. I love jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku, psychology, philosophy, and a good mystery. Give me a handful of seemingly disconnected pieces and I’ll happily spend hours figuring out how they fit together.
Sometimes I even find the answer.
Other times, I end up with seventeen more questions.
Such is life.
As 2026 begins winding toward its conclusion, I’ve found myself contemplating something considerably larger than the average thousand-piece puzzle.
What the hell is the purpose of all this?
And by all this, I mean the whole magnificent, bewildering, occasionally heartbreaking business of being alive.
The people we meet. The relationships we build. The things we create. The things we lose. The circumstances that seem to appear out of nowhere and rearrange our carefully constructed lives.
Are we following some grand cosmic blueprint? Carrying forward unfinished business from previous lifetimes? Encountering people we’re somehow destined to meet?
Or are we simply moving through an extraordinary collection of circumstances, doing our best to make sense of them?
And perhaps most importantly, are these experiences happening for a reason, or are we simply very good at finding reasons after they happen?
It’s a distinction worth considering.
Naturally, my investigation has involved astrology, tarot, Buddhism, psychology, a little Kabbalah, and enough philosophical rabbit holes to make Alice reconsider following the White Rabbit in the first place.
And I haven’t even gotten to the good stuff.
A Horse, a Chariot, and Two Opposing Forces
2026 is the Chinese Year of the Fire Horse.
Traditionally associated with independence, passion, vitality, and tremendous momentum, the Fire Horse is quite an image.
Powerful. Restless. Unapologetically alive.
I rather like her.
But energy without direction can be a dangerous thing. Fire can illuminate or destroy. A horse can carry us toward something extraordinary or gallop straight off a cliff.
Which brings me to my personal tarot card for the year: The Chariot.
The Chariot is commonly associated with determination, victory, and forward movement. But what interests me most isn’t the movement.
It’s the balance.
In the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, two sphinxes sit before the charioteer, one black and one white. Opposing forces. And interestingly, there are no visible reins.
The charioteer’s challenge isn’t simply to make them move.
It’s to bring them into alignment.
I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit.
We tend to approach life as though opposing qualities must compete. Reason versus emotion. Independence versus intimacy. Strength versus vulnerability. Compassion versus judgment.
But perhaps wisdom isn’t found in choosing one over the other.
Perhaps it’s found in recognizing that both have something to contribute.
We can be compassionate and establish boundaries. We can embrace mystery and practice discernment. We can love passionately without surrendering our autonomy.
Balance isn’t the absence of opposing forces. It’s learning how to move forward without being torn apart by them.
And perhaps the most interesting thing about the Chariot is that the person standing at its center must first learn to govern the forces within.
The destination is almost secondary.
Written in the Stars
I am a Scorpio.
And not just a casual, garden-variety Scorpio. I have my Sun, Mercury, and Venus in Scorpio.
Apparently, the universe thought one Scorpio placement wasn’t nearly enough.
Scorpio is traditionally associated with emotional depth, transformation, intensity, and an almost pathological determination to discover what lies beneath the surface.
I cannot imagine why this appeals to me.
But here’s where my birth chart becomes especially entertaining.
Both my Moon and my Ascendant—my rising sign—are in Gemini.
Gemini is associated with communication, curiosity, intellectual exploration, and the ability to consider multiple perspectives.
So apparently, I have one part of myself determined to uncover the deepest mysteries of human existence and another insisting on asking approximately 47 follow-up questions about whatever we find.
It’s a wonder I get anything done.
And it gets better.
In astrology, Gemini is ruled by Mercury. Because Gemini is my rising sign, Mercury is considered the ruler of my birth chart.
And where is Mercury?
Scorpio.
Of course it is.
So, symbolically speaking, the very planet governing how I approach the world is sitting in a sign famous for investigation, psychological depth, and uncovering hidden truths.
Add a Gemini Moon, and apparently I’ve been astrologically equipped to interrogate everything from human motivation to the meaning of existence.
Suddenly, “Tssat?” seems less like a childhood milestone and more like a lifelong mission statement.
But there’s another fascinating concentration in my chart.
My Sun, Mercury, and Venus all occupy the sixth house, traditionally associated with work, service, daily responsibilities, and the ways we contribute to the world.
I’ve spent much of my life finding purpose through work. I love creating things, solving problems, being useful, and becoming completely immersed in something I’m passionate about.
Whether I’m cooking, writing, working with people, or developing some elaborate creative undertaking that probably seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea at two in the morning, I like having something meaningful to do.
And this year has made me reconsider how closely we sometimes associate our identities with our work.
What happens when something we’ve poured ourselves into is suddenly no longer part of our lives?
What happens when the circumstances change, but the need to create, contribute, and find purpose remains?
Perhaps our work is an expression of who we are, rather than the thing that defines us.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me.
The Lunar Nodes: Recognition, Belonging, and Freedom
In evolutionary astrology, the South Node is sometimes interpreted as representing the patterns, experiences, and tendencies we carry from previous lifetimes, while the North Node represents the qualities we’re invited to develop in this one.
Whether those patterns actually originate in another lifetime is something I cannot establish. But I find the symbolism fascinating.
My South Node (past life) is in Leo, in the fourth house, traditionally associated with home, family, ancestry, emotional security, and belonging. My North Node (current incarnation) is in Aquarius, in the tenth house, associated with independence, vocation, public identity, and our contributions to the wider world.
And my North Node is almost exactly conjunct my Midheaven, the point astrologers associate with career, reputation, and the direction of our public lives.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
In karmic astrology, the Leo–Aquarius axis can represent a movement from seeking personal recognition toward developing the freedom to no longer require it.
Leo wants to shine. To create, to love generously, to be appreciated, and to know that its presence matters.
Aquarius asks a different question.
Can I recognize my own value without depending on someone else to recognize it for me?
And perhaps that’s one of the more significant lessons I’ve been confronting.
I’ve spent much of my life pouring myself into my work, my relationships, my family, and the things I create. I’ve loved deeply, worked tirelessly, and taken enormous satisfaction in contributing something meaningful.
Naturally, I want those contributions to matter. I want the people I love to understand what I’ve given. I want my work to be appreciated.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
But there’s an enormous difference between wanting recognition and needing it.
Can I know the value of what I’ve given without requiring someone else to confirm it?
Can I love someone without needing them to acknowledge the significance of that love?
Can I create something beautiful without requiring applause?
Can I walk away from something I once considered an important part of my identity without believing that its ending diminishes everything I contributed?
And perhaps most importantly, can I allow someone else to misunderstand my story without feeling compelled to correct their version of it?
These are questions of agency, autonomy, and nonattachment.
And they bring me right back to Buddhism.
Nonattachment doesn’t mean becoming indifferent to appreciation, love, or recognition. Nor does it mean accepting mistreatment or pretending that reciprocity doesn’t matter.
It means understanding that our worth doesn’t depend entirely upon what someone else thinks of us.
Perhaps spiritual growth isn’t about rejecting everything we once were. Perhaps it’s about learning how to carry the wisdom of our past into the choices of our present.
My Leo South Node doesn’t ask me to abandon warmth, passion, loyalty, or creativity. Those are beautiful qualities worth preserving.
And my Aquarius North Node doesn’t ask me to stop loving or contributing.
It invites me, symbolically, to do those things from a place of greater independence.
I can know my own worth without needing someone else to recognize it.
And perhaps that’s the most beautiful way to understand the movement from Leo to Aquarius:
The lesson isn’t to extinguish my light. It’s to stop depending on who happens to be looking.
Can I honor the life I’ve built without believing it must define the life I build next?
That’s a question worth asking.
And there are other interesting tensions in my chart.
My Venus sits at the very end of Scorpio, while Mars occupies the final degree of Aquarius. They form a close square, an aspect astrologers traditionally associate with friction between different impulses.
In this case, the symbolism involves emotional intensity, love, independence, desire, and personal freedom.
Again, those opposing forces.
The Chariot seems determined to make an appearance wherever I look.
My Gemini Moon also opposes Jupiter in Sagittarius, a combination that invites another interesting reflection: the relationship between curiosity, emotional experience, philosophical exploration, and the search for meaning.
Sagittarius, after all, is associated with the bigger questions.
And I do love a bigger question.
But what I find most interesting about examining my birth chart isn’t whether it proves anything about my destiny.
It’s whether its symbolism gives me a useful way to question how I understand myself.
I can enjoy astrology without believing the planets are sitting up there orchestrating my Tuesday afternoon.
I can find a particular configuration remarkable without assuming it determines my behavior.
And I can recognize myself in an interpretation while remembering that recognition isn’t necessarily evidence of causation.
Perhaps the more interesting question isn’t whether my birth chart predicted who I would become, but whether examining it helps me understand who I am choosing to become.
That is a considerably more useful question.
The People Who Enter Our Stories
I suspect most of us have encountered someone whose arrival seemed almost inexplicably significant.
A lover. A friend. A mentor. A colleague. Sometimes even a complete stranger.
Someone whose presence changes the direction of our lives in ways we never anticipated.
Occasionally, the connection feels immediate. Familiar. As though some part of us recognizes something we cannot quite explain.
And because human beings are spectacularly uncomfortable with mystery, we reach for explanations.
Soulmates. Twin flames. Karmic connections. Soul contracts.
The notion that certain people enter our lives because we have unfinished spiritual business together is certainly intriguing.
Perhaps we’ve encountered one another before. Perhaps there are lessons carried across lifetimes. Perhaps our paths intersect for reasons extending far beyond our understanding.
I won’t pretend to know.
But I’ve begun questioning something about the way we interpret these connections.
Why do we so often assume that the intensity of a connection is evidence of its destiny?
A relationship can feel profoundly familiar because of emotional compatibility, shared experiences, psychological patterns, or powerful attraction.
Sometimes the familiarity may have less to do with another lifetime than with something we’ve experienced in this one.
And sometimes we simply meet someone extraordinary.
Familiarity is not necessarily fate. Intensity is not necessarily intimacy. And transformation is not necessarily evidence of divine intention.
I find that distinction liberating.
Because it allows an experience to be meaningful without requiring it to have been cosmically arranged.
We can love someone deeply without believing they were destined to belong to us.
We can encounter someone who changes our understanding of ourselves without assuming they were sent to accomplish that purpose.
We can appreciate the beauty of a connection without insisting it must last forever.
Something doesn’t have to be written in the stars to be written indelibly into our lives.
And perhaps the mystery itself is part of what makes being human so fascinating.
Karma Is Not Cosmic Customer Service
I’ve been a practicing Buddhist for years, and one of the things that continues to intrigue me is how thoroughly the concept of karma has been misunderstood.
Someone behaves badly. Something unfortunate happens to them. And suddenly everyone is celebrating the arrival of karma.
As though the universe has a complaint department and someone’s number finally came up.
But karma, in Buddhist philosophy, is considerably more nuanced.
At its foundation, karma concerns intentional action and its consequences.
What we do matters. Why we do it matters. And our actions help shape the circumstances that follow.
Traditional Buddhism also teaches that karmic consequences may extend across multiple lifetimes, although it rejects the notion of a permanent, unchanging soul traveling intact from one body to another.
Which is fascinating, because it raises an obvious question.
If there is no eternal self, what exactly continues?
Entire schools of Buddhist philosophy have wrestled with that question for centuries.
I’m not going to solve it here. Although, given enough coffee, I might make a respectable attempt.
What interests me most is the relationship between karma and agency.
Because karma isn’t simply about what has already happened.
It’s about what we choose to do next.
And Buddhism makes another distinction that I consider enormously important: not everything that happens to us is necessarily the result of our past karma.
Not every painful experience is a spiritual debt.
Not every loss is punishment.
Not every person who hurts us was sent to teach us something.
Sometimes shit just happens.
We get sick. We lose people. Relationships change. Careers end. Circumstances unfold in ways we could never have anticipated.
And I find it troubling when people insist that every painful experience must have occurred for some higher purpose.
That philosophy can become particularly cruel when applied to suffering.
We don’t need to believe someone was destined to hurt us to acknowledge that the experience changed us.
We don’t have to justify suffering to find meaning in surviving it.
Something can change us without having happened for the purpose of changing us.
And perhaps recognizing that distinction is itself a form of wisdom.
The Question of Lessons
Still, I do believe people can teach us extraordinary things.
Some teach us about generosity, compassion, courage, and love.
Others challenge our assumptions about loyalty, honesty, responsibility, or the limits of our own understanding.
Some inspire us to become more of who we already are.
Others make us question whether the person we’ve been trying to become is really the person we want to be.
And sometimes, someone enters our life, rearranges the furniture in our head, and leaves us standing there wondering what the hell just happened.
But I’m increasingly interested in the difference between believing people were sent to teach us something and recognizing that we can learn something from having known them.
Perhaps the universe isn’t handing out spiritual assignments.
Perhaps being in relationship with other people is simply one of the fundamental ways we learn about ourselves.
And perhaps the most important lessons aren’t always about the other person.
Maybe they’re about our assumptions.
Our expectations.
Our attachment to particular outcomes.
Or our tendency to keep searching for explanations long after we’ve gathered enough information to make a conscious choice.
That last one deserves considerably more attention.
But we’ll get there.
The Stories We Write Together
I’ve come to think of life as an unfolding story.
We enter the world with circumstances we didn’t choose. Families, histories, cultural expectations, inherited beliefs, and perhaps, depending on your spiritual perspective, karmic tendencies carried from somewhere beyond our present understanding.
Then the characters begin arriving.
Some stay for decades. Others appear for a chapter or two. Some bring joy, some bring conflict, and some alter the entire direction of the narrative.
We influence one another constantly.
Our choices affect other people. Their choices affect us. We create experiences together, sometimes intentionally and sometimes without any understanding of how significant those experiences may eventually become.
In that sense, we’re all co-authors.
But co-authorship has limits.
Two people can profoundly influence each other’s stories without having the authority to determine each other’s endings.
I love that distinction.
Because it acknowledges the significance of our connections without denying the individuality of the people involved.
We may write beautiful chapters together.
We may create something neither of us could have created alone.
But we do not own one another’s stories.
And we cannot insist that another person continue writing simply because we’re not ready for the chapter to end.
That doesn’t make what we shared meaningless.
It makes us human.
And it brings me back to the question of purpose.
Perhaps we’re not here to discover a script written long before we arrived.
Perhaps we’re here to participate in a story that is constantly unfolding, shaped by circumstances, relationships, intentions, and choices.
Perhaps some encounters are extraordinary because they awaken something within us.
And perhaps others are extraordinary simply because, for a little while, two lives intersected in a way that mattered.
We may never know why.
And I’m beginning to think that’s okay.
I still love a mystery. I still love recognizing patterns and discovering connections. The little girl who asked “Tssat?” at nine months old isn’t going anywhere.
But I’m becoming increasingly interested in the possibility that understanding everything may not be a prerequisite for living meaningfully.
We can be curious without becoming consumed. Passionate without becoming possessive. Compassionate without abandoning ourselves.
We can be both the High Priestess, willing to sit with mystery, and the Empress, willing to create something beautiful from the life unfolding before us.
And perhaps the Chariot is what happens when we learn to bring those qualities together.
Not by eliminating the opposing forces within us, but by finding a conscious direction through them.
Because here’s something I’ve been thinking about.
We can spend our entire lives examining why certain people entered our stories, why circumstances unfolded as they did, and whether some larger purpose was being served.
But perhaps the more important question isn’t why the story began.
Perhaps it’s what we choose to do with it.
When does recognizing a recurring pattern become the opportunity to stop repeating it?
That, I think, is where karma becomes considerably more interesting.
And that’s where we’re going next.
Next in the series: Karma, Part II — The Lessons We Repeat.