When Everything Becomes Too Interesting - A Virgo Lesson in Discernment
Mystical Still Life at Dawn by Astrrid and AI
4th September 2026
I have a tendency to find almost everything interesting. People especially. Give me an unusual conversation, an unexpected reaction, a strange coincidence, or something that doesn't quite make sense, and some part of my mind immediately wants to investigate it. What is happening underneath? What connects with what? Is there a pattern here that I haven't yet recognised? This is hardly surprising when so much of my work revolves around patterns and symbolic intelligence, and when I have spent years studying systems that encourage us to look beneath what is immediately visible. Astrology, numerology, psychology, mythology, symbolism, and various esoteric traditions all provide different ways of looking at the same human experience, and one of the things I find endlessly fascinating is where those different systems begin to overlap. I genuinely enjoy making those connections. Increasingly, however, I am also beginning to wonder whether there are times when I make things rather more interesting than they actually need to be.
I have noticed this particularly in relation to people. I am naturally interested in what makes someone tick, and I tend to notice inconsistencies, changes in behaviour, things that are said, and things that perhaps remain unsaid. Often this is useful as it is part of how I understand people, and undoubtedly part of what enables me to do the work I do. But I am becoming more conscious of just how much processing can be taking place beneath the surface of what might be, and should be, a perfectly ordinary interaction. A comment can be connected to something that happened several weeks ago, which reminds me of something else, which suggests a possible underlying pattern, and before long I have constructed a rather sophisticated interpretation of something that may simply have been another person having a bad day..!
There is also a cumulative tiredness that can come from relating to the world in this way. When you are constantly looking beneath the surface, the world contains an extraordinary amount of information. People become particularly information-rich because there are so many layers available to explore - what they say, how they say it, what they do, what they don't do, their history, their motivations, the dynamics between you, and all the symbolic material that can potentially be added on top. I don't particularly want to stop noticing these things, because curiosity and pattern recognition are fundamental parts of who I am. What I am becoming more interested in is the possibility of becoming much more selective about when I engage this circuitry. In other words, the capacity can remain available without needing to be permanently switched on.
This seems particularly appropriate to consider during Virgo Sun season. Virgo is usually associated with analysis, discrimination, refinement, improvement, and service - all of which sound extremely positive until we consider what happens when those qualities are applied continuously. Virgo is also ruled by the planet Mercury, traditionally associated with the mind, thinking, communication, and the way we process and organise information. In Virgo, this Mercurial capacity tends to be particularly discriminating - examining, sorting, comparing and looking for what is useful, relevant or could be made to work better. Analysis can therefore become over-analysis, refinement can become an endless search for what still needs improving, and service can gradually become an assumption that because we can see where something is needed, we should be the person to provide it. As a Virgo Ascendant/Rising Sign, this is territory I know particularly well. There can be a subtle orientation towards looking at the world and noticing what could be understood better, organised better, improved, or made more useful. Yet perhaps one of the more developed expressions of Virgo is knowing what not to work on.
There is another layer to this in my own chart because Mercury - the ruler of my Virgo Ascendant - sits in Pisces in my 7th house of relationships and one-to-one encounters. This gives my Mercurial nature a rather different quality from the neat, analytical version we might immediately associate with Virgo. My mind is highly associative and receptive, often picking up impressions, connections and subtleties before I have consciously decided what to do with them. With Mercury in the 7th house, other people can provide particularly rich material for this process, which perhaps explains why I can find them quite so interesting! There is always another layer that could potentially be explored, another connection to make or another perspective from which to understand an interaction. Yet this also reinforces the importance of discernment for me personally. Being capable of perceiving more does not necessarily mean that everything I perceive requires further investigation.
That feels increasingly important to me because, after all, discernment is one of Virgo's great qualities. We often think of discernment as the ability to examine something carefully enough to distinguish what is true, useful or relevant, but perhaps it begins a stage earlier than that. Before analysing something, we can ask whether it actually requires our analysis at all, and perhaps briefly question why we feel the need to analyse it in the first place. Before trying to improve something, we can decide whether it actually needs improving. Before attempting to understand another person at considerable depth, we can consider whether that level of understanding is necessary for the relationship we actually have with them. There is, of course, a slight paradox here because this initial discernment itself requires a degree of analysis. Yet perhaps a little thoughtful discrimination at the beginning can save a considerable amount of extended thinking, interpretation and energy afterwards. In that sense, the answer to excessive analysis may not be to abandon analysis, but to become considerably more discerning about where we direct it.
This has also made me think differently about the value of ordinary people and ordinary situations. I am particularly attracted to people who stimulate me intellectually, psychologically, or spiritually. I enjoy conversations that go somewhere unexpected, and I like being around people who introduce me to ideas I haven't previously considered. There is nothing wrong with that, and I certainly don't intend to start seeking out deliberately boring company! (Note: ‘boring’ only in my own vulnerably subjective eyes!) But I do wonder whether requiring people to be especially interesting can inadvertently make connection itself rather complicated. Not everyone in our lives needs to become a profound relationship, an intellectual companion, a source of transformation, or someone whose inner world we need to understand. There is considerable value in people who are simply enjoyable to spend some time with - whether that involves sharing a coffee, having a laugh, attending the same event, or exchanging a few words because our paths happen to cross regularly.
The same may be true of experiences. A walk doesn't necessarily need to become a walking meditation, a coincidence doesn't always need to become a synchronicity, and an unexpected conversation doesn't have to contain a message that needs decoding later. There is a danger, particularly when we become deeply interested in symbolic systems, that almost anything can be incorporated into a wider structure of meaning. Given enough symbolic material and sufficient imagination (which I undoubtedly possess), patterns can be found almost everywhere. That doesn't make symbolic interpretation meaningless, but it does make discernment essential. There is an important difference between recognising a pattern that genuinely illuminates something and projecting a pattern because we have become accustomed to looking for one.
Perhaps this is also where symbolic intelligence needs to contain its own counterbalance. Developing greater sensitivity to patterns does not necessarily mean that we should interpret more and more of our lives. It may eventually mean that we become better at recognising which patterns deserve our attention and which can simply be noticed and allowed to pass. I am increasingly interested in this distinction because I don't think symbolic intelligence should take us away from ordinary life. Ideally, it should help us participate in it more consciously. If every experience becomes something to interpret, we can end up standing slightly outside our own lives, observing and analysing them rather than simply inhabiting them. I fear I may have spent excessive time in the past doing this. Or did I..? There goes that analytical streak again…
…Yet this connects with another distinction I have been exploring recently - between the ‘service’ that is associated with the sign of Virgo, and what I think of as ‘Sacred Service’. After all, ones Ascendant represents a core energy we are here to learn about (to ‘rise’ into), and part of that is an opportunity to help evolve the way signs express at a collective level. For much of my life, service could be activated simply by recognising that somebody needed something, and realising that I had that ability to provide it. When you are naturally perceptive, however, this creates an enormous potential field of responsibility because there will always be needs that you can see, problems you can understand and situations in which you could potentially make yourself useful. So when this has become too tiresome I have tended to withdraw from people. Yet I have been rethinking this, which has led to Sacred Service feeling rather different to me. It involves developing what is genuinely mine to develop, and making that knowledge, experience or capacity available where it can meaningfully serve. This is a very different mindset as it moves away from assuming that every need I perceive is somehow mine to meet. Or that I even have it within my power to solve these. It’s actually been quite a liberating reframing of thinking and helps me to better align with what I am actually here to do – rather than what my underlying personality traits draw me towards doing.
I think the same principle can be applied to attention. Just because I have the ability to analyse something at a deep level doesn't mean that I need to. Just because I can see beneath the surface of a situation doesn't mean that I need to keep digging. Just because somebody is interesting doesn't mean that I need to understand them, and someone doesn't actually need to be particularly interesting for me to enjoy having them in my life. There is something rather freeing in allowing our capacities to become resources that we consciously draw upon rather than processes that run continuously in the background. Perhaps that is part of what I am learning at the moment - not to become less curious, less perceptive or less interested in meaning, but to allow considerably more of life to simply be what it is.
There will always be things that catch my attention and send me disappearing down another fascinating rabbit hole, and I cannot imagine wanting to change that. It is one of the things I most enjoy about being alive. But perhaps there is also wisdom in recognising that the ordinary does not need to be made extraordinary in order to have value. Some people can simply be pleasant company. Some days can simply be pleasant days. Some experiences can remain unexplained, and some questions can be left unanswered without becoming unfinished business. The surface of life is not necessarily superficial; sometimes it is simply where life is happening. And perhaps learning when to stop searching for the pattern is itself another form of discernment.
~ Astrrid
Continuing the Conversation…
This reflection has left me thinking more about discernment as an essential part of Symbolic Intelligence - not simply developing our ability to recognise patterns and meaning, but learning when those patterns deserve our attention and when life can simply be allowed to unfold without interpretation. It has also opened up further questions for me around Sacred Service, and how becoming more selective about where we place our attention, energy and abilities may be an important part of understanding what is genuinely ours to contribute.
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Continue the Journey
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