The Value of Commitment:

I have been thinking very much about value because we are about to enter yet another Venus retrograde in Scorpio.Venus retrogrades about every 1.6 years, and over eight years it returns to more or less the same area of the zodiac. Looking backward through 2018, 2010, 2002, 1994, and so on, I wanted to see where I was, what I was doing, what I was committing myself to, and especially what I thought had value at the time.Economic value is a practice.For me, this Venus retrograde moves through my 9th house, and Mercury will also retrograde through the same area. The New Moon next week in Libra is also going to be around the same neighborhood.My natal Moon is in Scorpio, and it falls in the 9th house. It is in a closing relationship to Neptune in the 10th, and the Moon in my chart rules my North Node in Cancer in the 5th house.Of course, I am interested in perspective, in seeking truth, and in going deeper into the underworld.This is my descent.I am interested in how perspective changes what I value, value being one of the signatures of Venus. How I listen to my needs and how I value those needs changes the choices I make.The 9th house in my chart is where I metabolize experience into meaning. That is probably why I keep going back through old cycles. I am looking at what I believed then, what I was seeking then, what I valued then, and what my behavior revealed about all of it at the time.The interesting part is the distance between those versions of me. That creates another pattern ready to be deciphered. Like a spiral it shows long term evolutionary processes.What becomes very salient every eight years; as of the last one in 2018, I have been working on economic value for a while.As for Scorpio, it deals with shared values, merging, commitment, confrontation, and the places where another person or partnership enters your field and suddenly value becomes something you have to negotiate with one another.It is also the place of the underworld where we meet our own deepest fears.Going back to Persephone and how she came out of the underworld and what she brought: what are the goodies here of my realization?The descent to the underworld will provide a sense of value uncovering truths.When you are learning what you need, you are also confronted with knowing what you are willing to give and how far you are willing to merge with somebody or something else while remaining inside your own life.Commitment takes a turn here.It sounds romantic until we look at what it actually requires: our time, our attention, our energy, and the fact that we follow through.Our choices and the repetition of them will sometimes feel like a sacrifice or an offering. Sometimes saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else.Economics is fundamentally concerned with choices. Resources, time, attention, and energy are finite, therefore every decision implies an allocation.This applies not just to money, it surely applies to relationships. ROI, opportunity cost.Where am I putting my time?ROI means return on investment, a simple financial metric used to measure the amount of profit or loss generated by an investment relative to its total cost. Where am I putting my attention?If I am spending hours trying to get somebody to do something they already told me they want to do, because they want me as their accountability mentor, what am I actually investing in?At what point does accountability become me carrying somebody else’s commitment?In the past, I would sign up for that because I felt it was important to be there for others. Now, coming into this retrograde, I have been re-evaluating how I want to relate to the other.I have the South Node, Jupiter, and now Mars transiting my 7th house in Leo, so if my relationship to the other is not solar, there is no point in connecting.Some people speak about what they want all the time. I do it too. Then there is what I actually do every day. What time I wake up. What I postpone, what I practice; where the hours go. At some point, behavior starts telling the story more clearly than intention.At this point in my life, what interests me more is what unfolds in the present moment between two people, two points of contact. It could be situations and things as well. The shadow can surface there too. I just don’t want to enter the relationship through responsibility for somebody else’s process, or by carrying something that belongs to them.A person can sincerely want something and continuously choose actions that move somewhere else. What is the commitment behind the intention?Sometimes I am seeing a version of myself from 25 years ago through another person. I know somebody can eventually cross it because I did. The problem begins when, because I can see the route, I st