Week of April 12th to April 18th, 2022
Your brain is a sponge, Virgo. I don’t mean that in a positive way, just so you know. Across time people have uttered the very same sentence to describe positive traits like a curious mind; or to praise a voracious reader. This is not how I mean it. I’m not an adoring and optimistic parent, gazing at you as you ask an unexpected (yet insightful!) question that makes me rethink my worldview. No, no. You are an adult; your brain is a sponge less so in the way of lapping up knowledge, and more so in the way that it cannot help but soak up whatever spills onto it.
Perhaps a stronger metaphor is clay, Virgo. Yes, that’s a little better, a little less likely to be mistaken for a compliment yet still makes clear that you are—chronically—far too malleable.
When you consume anything (book, podcast, tv show) frequently, your wretched little sponge/clay brain soaks it in and suddenly you’ve got a new worldview; whether you know it or not.
For example:
When you watch too much of the Housewives franchise, you start to believe you’d be happier if you had a boob job and a charity affiliation (which may actually be true).
When you listen to a podcast about the decades of harm stemming from the misinterpretations of the 1955 book Lolita, you enthusiastically pick as many fights with your husband as possible, as you’ve just remembered that he’s a man and therefore to blame for the world.
After reading a novel critiquing the wellness industry, you race to spend $95 on various creams and ointments (missing the point entirely). Products like these were mentioned so often in the story that it left you craving the rush of purchasing almost-liquids that will not noticeably change your life.
When you watch a movie about a little kid who sees ghosts, you begin to suspect that you too, possess such a gift (it was not a documentary, but you never let “reality” stop you from accepting fiction as fact or suggestion).
When you rewatched your favorite detective show this year, you were convinced that every single sound in your apartment building was some sort of “clue” indicating a nefarious crime that you were morally obligated to solve. (You never did find out what that two hours of squeaking each night between 5:30-7:30 was. It sounded like 2 solid hours of aggressive window washing, but these apartments only have four total windows and there’s no way it’s taking a half hour per window).
The skies are pleased to see you engage so deeply with the content you consume, but we’d prefer if you didn’t approach each work as a manifesto on How To Be. We recommend sitting with the works you’ve ingested, letting their ideas and themes influence some of your thoughts without completely dominating each of your precious neurons.
Unfortunately, I know you won’t take this advice to heart. Instead, you’re going to absolutely inhale an essay collection about how socially strange it is to be the first person at school to get boobs, and set martial landmines for your husband to find since he—cruelly—went through age 11 boobless.
At the very least, you do seem to have the good sense to be choosy about what you engage with. On some level you are aware of your susceptibility to accept new information as your entire worldview. Despite your best efforts, some unvetted content still sneaks through the cracks. You’ll accidentally watch a tv show with commercials this week, and you’ll leave the experience under the false impression that you’d be happier if you had a jeep to go “off-roading” (?) in. Trust me, you wouldn’t be.
You Are What You Read
boobs and charity, what more can you call a life!? As always, brilliant!