Impossible But Fun Tasks

. . . that can make us smarter and wilder and kinder

IMPOSSIBLE BUT FUN TASKS

Below I name five tasks that are very hard and very fun to do. They are less like problems to be solved than like instruments to be played. We don’t “finish” or “master” the cello; we practice it for a lifetime and call the practicing music.

I offer these tasks to you in a spirit of cheerful impossibility. Each one asks for more than any of us can reliably deliver, which is exactly why they stay interesting. The goal isn’t to become experts at these arts, which will never happen, but to become smarter and wilder and kinder as we work on them.

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IMPOSSIBLE BUT FUN TASK #1. To thrive in the midst of raging contradictions

Our challenge is to not merely tolerate contradiction. Instead we cheerfully apply the truth that contradiction is often a nutrient.

The spiritual traditions we draw from know this well: Taoist sages don’t resolve the tension between yin and yang, but inhabit it.

Kabbalists say the chaotic material world is as real and valid and necessary as Ein Sof, the utterly pristine and unknowable aspect of the Divine.

The trickster, my own favorite archetype, is constitutionally drawn to paradox and contradiction, loves to play in the the overlap between realms. Why? Because that’s where the sacred action is.

What makes a contradiction “rage” is our expectation that it should resolve. Our task is to reframe the rumination so that we fully abide in an uncanny knowing: Contradictions aren’t necessarily problems that demand solutions, but usually the actual texture of reality at sufficient depth.

Life insists on being both precious and brutal. Beauty keeps appearing inside ugliness. Sublime redemption hides in the shameful.

Our job isn’t to file these opposites into separate drawers but to develop the suppleness that lets us be at home in the roar of irreconcilability.

Thriving means we can think clearly, love fully, and act decisively even when the ground is paradox all the way down.

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IMPOSSIBLE BUT FUN TASK #2. To interrupt and overthrow compulsively negative trains of thought in the middle of their flow through our brains

This is hard. Negative thought patterns have momentum. They gather speed.

By the time we recognize we’re in one, it may have already commandeered significant neural territory and is busy recruiting allies: memories that confirm its narrative, sensations that validate its urgency, and future scenarios that prove its gloomy predictions.

To interrupt the flow mid-stream requires an internal heroism that no one gives us credit for, because the battle is invisible. We have to locate and pull the emergency brake while the train is moving.

We have to remember that we aren’t the train. The thought isn’t a fact. The feeling isn’t a forecast. The story the mind tells with such compelling authority is a ramshackle story, not a verdict.

This is some of the most demanding spiritual athleticism available to humans. And it must often be performed while exhausted, in public, with no applause.

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A Pre-Emptive Word to the Skeptic: People who don’t know my work well may read the passage above and cry “toxic positivity.” If you’re one of them, here’s my reply: https://tinyurl.com/NoToxicPositivity

IMPOSSIBLE BUT FUN TASK #3. To negotiate partial solutions to complex problems; to do the partially right thing when it’s impossible to do the totally right thing

Perfectionism isn’t the noble virtue it pretends to be. Too often it functions as paralysis dressed in high-mindedness. It’s a refusal to act until conditions that will never arrive will supposedly finally arrive.

Real life rarely offers the pure, clean, uncompromised option. It offers the messy middle and the imperfect compromise. If we’re honest and compassionate, the 60% solution might actually help someone—if we’re willing to stop mourning the 100% solution that exists only in our imagination.

To negotiate a partial solution requires the intellectual humility to admit that the half a loaf on the table is far better than having no loaf at all.

We’ve got to prize moral flexibility by accepting that doing some good is better than doing a perfect nothing.

And we must have tolerance for the discomfort of knowing we fell short of the ideal.

Those who gain skill at this exercise become genuinely useful in the world. Those who don’t often become experts at explaining why nothing can be done.

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IMPOSSIBLE BUT FUN TASK #4. To be discerning as we protect ourselves from people’s flaws while at the same time being generous as we celebrate their beauty.

This one is exquisitely difficult because the two moves, protection and celebration, may seem to be each other’s enemy.

Our discernment can congeal into coldness; our generosity can slide into enabling. The task is to keep both valves fully open at once, which requires a bifocal vision most of us were never taught.

What it demands is seeing people in layers. Their wounds or limitations, which can genuinely harm us, occupy one layer. The irreducible beauty of their soul occupies another layer. And neither cancels the other.

Protection without celebration produces a defended, armored life. We become safe but small. Celebration without discernment produces naivety and eventually resentment.

The mature form of this practice lets us avoid exposing ourselves to someone’s destructive patterns in the same breath as we honor their beauty.

This is fierce love rather than sentimental love. It sees clearly and cherishes anyway.

IMPOSSIBLE BUT FUN TASK #5. To graduate from a batch of weird karma that has persisted.

Is it even feasible to graduate from a batch of weird karma that has persisted despite our efforts to outrun and outgrow it? I say yes: But we must:

1. accept the situation as it is;

2. acknowledge our role in precipitating and prolonging it;

3. feel gratitude for what it has taught us.

These are three distinct and sequential gates, and most of us get stuck at the first one.

Acceptance isn’t the same as defeated resignation. It’s the refusal to keep paying the psychic tax of wishing reality were otherwise.

The second gate is harder still: acknowledging not just that we are in a dicey mess, but that we helped create the dicey mess. We didn’t build it alone and we may have done it without our full conscious knowledge. Our unconscious patterns may have played the largest role.

This gate tends to provoke intense resistance, because the ego experiences accountability as an attack. But without passing through it, we remain victims of circumstance rather than participants in our own story.

The third gate, gratitude, seems at first like cruelty, but is in fact liberation. Not gratitude as performance or toxic positivity, but the real thing: the recognition that this peculiar affliction delivered lessons available nowhere else.

It honed capacities that simple ease would never have forged. It revealed dimensions of ourselves that fair weather never would have exposed.

If we pass through all three gates, there’s a good chance that we will graduate from the messy karma. Ignore even one gate, and it willn arrange for our enrollment in the next semester.

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None of these five IMPOSSIBLE BUT FUN TASKS will ever be checked off completely. We will practice them badly, then slightly less badly, then badly again in some fresh way we hadn’t yet imagined. Eventually, we may develop some decent but eminently fallible skill.

That’s the fun of it. The impossibility is what keeps the door open, forever, to becoming more interesting than we currently are.

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Check out my Linktree, with links to other things I create: linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week of July 2

CANCER (June 21-July 22): There are phases when the cosmic energies and I urge you to put others first—even tend to their pain before you tend to your own. But this isn’t one of those times. Right now, sacrificing yourself for the sake of others would obstruct the flow of righteous grace into your life. So then what is the most soul‑honoring path available? Here’s what I think: Summon your inventive brilliance and use it to imagine generous ways to care for yourself. Shower yourself with gifts, treats, and blessings that delight you. Take the loving care you so deftly pour into other people and lavish it wholeheartedly on yourself.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Most fields of human endeavor work like this: A few people are truly brilliant, a handful are actively harmful, and the majority fall somewhere between “not great” and “pretty good.” That’s true whether you’re talking about engineers, doctors, poets, or astrologers. So it’s inadvisable to assume a physician is wise about your well-being just because they’ve logged 15 years on the job, or to trust your life direction to the first astrologer whose promotion catches your eye. In the coming weeks, dear Leo, discernment like this matters even more than usual. Let your natural hopefulness be balanced by sharp, thoughtful judgment. Don’t just challenge obvious authority. Put every so-called fact, spin, assumption, and official line under your own clear-eyed review.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Architects designing spaces for collective use try to balance two human needs: to see expansively and also have safe places to retreat. Too much exposure creates anxiety; too much enclosure brings claustrophobia. The ideal is to provide both shelter and spaciousness. Let’s use this theme as a metaphor for your life during the coming months. You’ll be wise to create an equilibrium between engagement and privacy, between vastness and protection. Make it easy for yourself to observe the larger scene and also withdraw when needed.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Self-proclaimed “skeptics” love to sneer at astrologers, as if pondering what lies ahead were a violation of scientific purity. And yet economists, sports analysts, trend watchers, and political commentators churn out shaky predictions every day. Honestly, those professionals of probability often create more confusion than those of us who read the heavens. Take weather forecasters, for instance: From Europe to Japan, their models routinely miss sudden floods and twisters and trigger more than a few false alarms. But do the debunkers brand them as charlatans? Of course not. Forgive the outburst, but I’m building to a key foresight: Every forecast, projection, or vision that crosses your path over the next month will miss the mark—except for this one. So free yourself of their meddling.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Ethnobotanists describe how certain Indigenous traditions work with “teacher plants.” These are flora that offer not only physical benefits but spiritual instruction. They include psychoactive substances, but also ordinary plants approached with extraordinary attention. In the spirit of reinventing your education, Scorpio, I invite you to expand your understanding of who and what your teachers are. What ordinary elements of your daily life might offer wisdom if you engage them with deep respect? What situations at the edges of your awareness could bring lessons that enrich your perspectives? Now is an excellent time to seek new apprenticeships.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Western science and Western religions may disagree about how the universe began, but both place its birth in the distant past. Tantra and other spiritual paths, by contrast, propose that the universe is born afresh in every instant through the sacred, erotic interplay of God and Goddess. When humans approach love-making as an experimental sacrament, these traditions suggest, we can tune in to the union of those primordial forces and, in a sense, take part in the continual creation of existence. So, are you ready for a bit of world-making erotic play? The current astrological indicators say yes, you are.​

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CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): A common obstacle to healthy intimacy is the belief that a beloved ally should automatically know what you need, without you saying a word. I used to suffer from this delusion myself and worked hard to dissolve it. I no longer unconsciously assume that my companions are so attuned to me that they can always intuit my desires. But I know this bad idea feels romantic to many people, even though it can sabotage even the most promising bond. In the weeks ahead, Capricorn, I invite you to starve this fantasy. Your intimate world is ripe for a fresh infusion of lucid, straightforward honesty.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Your next few weeks will be sponsored by CoffeeBeer, the paradoxical elixir that both pumps up your energy and decompresses your defenses. You will be an exemplary role model for this innovative product because you will epitomize what occurs when a sensitive soul gets excited and mellows out at the same time. I also expect you will soon be exploring intriguing opportunities that become available to you because of your supercharged calm. Fortunately, you don’t need to drink actual coffee and beer together to make this happen. The cosmic forces will be conspiring to help you.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Finish this sentence, Pisces: “The one thing that really keeps me from being myself is _______.” Is it someone’s opinion, an old story about who you are, a fear of loss, a habit of over-pleasing, a secret shame, or a belief that you’re “too much” or “not enough”? Whatever first pops into your mind is probably closest to the truth. Here’s your next step: Loosen the grip of this stressor by even just 20 percent. I bet your real self will feel relaxed enough to bloom more fully.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Archaeologists studying ancient wells have discovered that some weren’t finished in a single effort. Communities might dig to the current water table, use the well for years, then probe further down when water levels dropped or needs increased. This is a useful metaphor for you, Aries. As of yet, you don’t have the ability or tools to reach the deepest layers you aspire to reach. My counsel is to go as far as you can now and gather what you find there. Later, when you’re readier, you will build on what has come before.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The doom‑and‑gloom wing of astrology is exhausting. The superstition that Mercury retrograde causes scrambled messages and dire mix‑ups is dull and misguided. The planet’s apparent backward motion, which is happening right now, shows up about three times every year like clockwork. It’s perfectly normal! In my view, Mercury retrograde isn’t threatening unless you obsess on the idea that it is, in which case, yes, your payment might go astray, and a friend may misunderstand you. But if cultivating relaxed clarity is more fun and productive for you than coping with fearful tension, treat the time between now and July 23 as a rich opportunity to refine, deepen, and upgrade how you communicate.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): You Gemini readers have decreed that I must halt all musings about maddening, riddle-drenched ambiguity. You’ve delivered the message to me that you’re tired of wrestling with enigmas wrapped in paradoxes. Straightforward, plainspoken factualness is what you want. Well, OK. (Please remember that I don’t make this stuff up; I simply channel cosmic omens.) Maybe I’ll start obeying your orders next time. But first, I will advise you: 1. Unexpected gifts are coming from people and situations in transition. 2. Tough but friendly interventions will nudge you toward healthy course corrections. 3. Mysterious assistance is on its way.

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