Blame it in on the Planets in Retrograde

Look, I understand (at least intellectually) that planets don't actually go into retrograde; meaning that they go backwards in their orbit. I know it just looks like it from our position in the solar system at the time. (Thanks, Neil Degrasse Tyson.) Despite this very scientific knowledge, it's still hard not to blame the funk that we seem to be in on a quadruple planet retrograde (Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto). Broken teeth, el niño costal, crappy dollar, intermittent wifi and a barrage of other minor irritants that seem to be plaguing our usually smooth watered life make is easy to blame a phenomenon that doesn't actually exist. (I believe L.M. Montgomery called them "Jonah days" in the Anne of Green Gables series.)

The science behind a retrograde planet

Surely, those huge celestial bodies must have some affect on our little marble of a planet. Come on, the moon creates our tides, so why not have some weird, unmeasurable happenings when we're passing planets and they seem to go backwards? Perhaps it's just the gravitational pull putting things just slightly off. Who knows. I think that there are things out there that we can't explain (yet) and that we might never be able to explain in a scientific manner. In fact, I find that kind of comforting, because usually life surprises the heck out of me and inexplicable things make me feel like I'm not a complete idiot bumbling through life.

Scientists would argue the placebo effect or perhaps self-fulfilling prophecy, but that doesn't make all those gnat infested problems any less. At least I have a better understanding of why historic man looked to the sky for answers - anything to explain the why of something inexplicable. Here's to getting out of the rut, here's to embracing science and getting past a creeping sense of "offness" and here's to our hard thinking ancestors who tried to figure it all out.