How Has Your Life Turned Out?

How has your life turned out so far?  Has it developed the way you wanted it to, the way you envisioned?  If it hasn't turned out the way you planned, do you feel satisfied with your journey so far anyway?

Presumably, if you're reading this, you're a boomer.  You've accumulated a lot of good life experience and perhaps some wisdom, too.  With experience sometimes comes regrets, though, for choices not taken or dreams not fulfilled.  How large a role do regrets play in your judgment of your life so far? 

When I look at charts, I often see an indicator for aspirations, for dreams and goals that may take a long time to fulfill.  There is usually an area of particular challenge as well.  The 11th house (traditionally, the house of hopes and wishes) is often a clue to the nature of a person's aspirations, particularly if a planet is located there.  The position of Saturn almost always indicates an area of challenge.  If the 11th house has no planets, planets in any of the later houses (9th through 12th) often indicate what person aspires to, longs for, or feels he or she ought to accomplish in life. 

My personal belief is that no one is meant to die unfulfilled. I believe that the potentials indicated by planets in later houses are there precisely becasue they are meant to be fulfilled.  I see many instances where fulfillment is a struggle of trial and error, of patience, or of suffering through hopes deferred.  Yet, I do think we have our potentials for a reason and that the universe intends for us to fulfill our desires.  I do not believe anyone is intended to die in a state of regret. 

On the other hand...the death of Kenneth Lay (discussed in Jill Fallon's recent blog entry) along with Jed Diamond's entry on male suicide indicate to me that some of us do indeed die with more regrets than fulfillment.  It is hard for me to imagine that Mr. Lay died without regrets, although of course I do not know his psyche.  (Astrologically, by the way, it sounds as though Pluto energy caught up with Lay, although I haven't analyzed his chart. Pluto represents, among other things, the inexorability of justice and moral law.)

I wish I understood why some people seem to fulfill the aspirations in their charts, exerting some necessary degree of effort and tenacity, while others seem to take the a wrong path in life and never get back on track.  If I understood the magic formula to staying on track, I would bottle it, I suppose. 

My own clients rarely seem to veer too far off track, even though they often experience their moments of angst when it seems they will never attain their desires.  I wonder if that's because people who seek astrological input are the kind of people who are more attuned to their inner needs or more willing to seek assistance in adjusting course during times of confusion. 

I don't know if some people are "fated" to do the kinds of things Mr. Lay was convicted of doing, things that seem to me to be so far off course as to be bewildering.  Perhaps, instead, these types of people exercise their free will to overrule some of the more positive potentials in their charts.  The power of free will certainly cannot be underestimated. 

Perhaps it is merely the human propensity for making mistakes that causes some of us to drift away, dramatically or subtly, from our souls' true purposes.  Is it ignorance or arrogance or error that causes these human tragedies, large and small? 

I don't know for sure.  I don't know that I would eliminate regret from the human spectrum of emotions. I do feel quite often, though, that part of what I am trying to do with clients is convince them that regrets are not their destiny, that there is always a chance to get back on course. 

So many, many times it is the intuitive voice in a client's head, the one that sometimes sounds silly or foolish or overly hopeful, that provides exactly the information the client needs to get on track towards all he or she can have in life.  In fact, if there's one piece of advice I would gratuitously offer anyone who will listen, it is to listen to that inner voice--the hopeful one that whispers "you can do it; someday, somehow, you can do it."