Elemental Care

Some personal observations on how each element's care tends to feel like

FIRE

Aries, Leo, Sagittarius

Fire signs allow you the gift of play. Their presence commands it so that you are a willing participant. They just make play easy. They'll ask you to draw or make art with them and they'll get you excited about getting coloring materials together. They'll banter with you, maybe even get a little competitive with you. I once found myself racing a fire sign at the parking lot of a mall on only five hours of sleep.

Fire signs are extremely generous. When they engage you in play, they also give you the energy for it.

Another important thing that fire signs give is a special kind of freedom to be yourself. It is special because not only do you receive that space to be yourself, you somehow get to experience your luminosity in it too. Like a golden statue on a pedestal. Much as fire signs will be the first to tease you for being on that pedestal, they will also be the first to behold you in your glory. In some ways, they are like your agents – telling the world (and also you) of how talented and amazing you are, especially when you struggle to believe it.

Fire signs care by inviting the child in you to run, jump, scream, be silly and imagine all that you can be and are waiting to be. They empower you. Their care will feel warm not in a way that is cozy and snug like a fireplace, but like you are the sun.

EARTH

Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn

Earth signs will get you that cake you've been craving for two weeks now that you're always feeling lazy to get. Sometimes they'll even bake their own version of it for you. Earth signs will do things for you, both the easy and the hard. They'll do the math of your expenses for you. They'll study how to deal with your most serious fuck-ups like, say, losing your passport. They will even accompany you or drive you to your lost passport appointment.

If they aren't doing things for you, they are somehow getting you to do whatever it is that you need to do without knowing it. They'll start asking you about your clothes and you'll find yourself cleaning your closet later that day – finally. They'll share about a productive workout they did the other day and you're inspired to start that exercise regime you promised yourself you would start doing regularly.

Earth signs have impeccable foresight and they will use it for your benefit. You go on a trip and earth signs will have packed all those arbitrary things you would've never thought you'd need until the circumstances reveal it. Yes, they were the ones who packed that strange, heavy rock that you are now using as a paperweight to your picnic mat on an exceptionally windy day. Even the arrangement of snacks in your snack bag was carefully considered so that you have easy access to everything in there.

Earth signs plan and anticipate for you, and they follow through adeptly. And they will never make you feel that it is a big deal. On the contrary, they will make it feel like it is the simplest and easiest thing to care for you.

When you're with earth signs, you're in good hands, in high-quality care.

AIR

Gemini, Libra, Aquarius

Air signs will reach you usually from a distance: perhaps a dry, unpunctuated text, a string of unconventional emojis, a random article from the deep trenches of the internet, or memes. And cat videos.

There is something both personal and impersonal about the care received from air signs. For example, when an air sign sends a meme, the choice of meme is of course personal – it comes with a trust that you would get it, that you won't just squander humor like that. There is care in trust. But the meme itself as a medium of care is impersonal because memes are everywhere. Everyone sends memes. And cat videos. Its universality seems to neutralize the intimacy to be had in the choice of the meme, so that the entire meme-sending appears to be no big deal.

And yet when you are not receiving memes from the air folk of your life, you do notice it, don't you?

It's akin to the AC being turned off on a hot summer day or the mountain breeze suddenly turning into city air. These changes in the room or environment point to the comfort that was there previously. The care is realized in the change of atmosphere.

Air signs care simply by being in your field – watching you, floating around you, circling you over and over like the planets do the sun.

The care is not dense: it doesn't feel like a hand on the shoulder or a big hug. To be honest, it hardly feels like anything. Almost imperceptible. It is not the kick of a really strong wine, but the ambiance of that night you drank the really strong wine and had the best time.

WATER

Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces

To talk about how water signs care, we need to talk about beavers. Beavers build dams out of branches, sticks, and stones. The dam is not their home but a means to building their home. The dam halts the flow of a river to create a pond. Right in the middle of this pond, they erect their lodge, their home, made of the same materials, like a small island in the middle of the ocean. This set up helps them ward off predators or unwanted guests with more ease.

At their best, water signs know to build dams. Without dams, their care will feel like a rushing river, its strong current sweeping with it whatever it picks up along the way. You can drown in a river and that is the last thing water signs want. And so there might be a guardedness or a distance to water signs in the beginning, which may even come across as not caring at all. But it is the opposite – they understand that their care is a force on its own and so they take that precautionary measure.

So just as beavers take the time to build their dam and lodge, water signs will take the time to first observe how you behave in their presence, what effect their energy has on you, and how close you are willing to come to them. Once they understand what the dynamic is, they will lower the gates of the dam in strategic increments and start to bathe you.

Water signs know that they cannot deliver just one serving of their care. Rain clouds will not let just one drop fall to the earth: when one drop falls, the sky will pour. As the Coldplay song goes, "Every teardrop is a waterfall." Ultimately, water signs want to wet you with care. They want you to feel it as viscerally and palpably as possible; that is the point of their care.

Water signs care by letting you into their private lodge so that you can be unhinged shamelessly. They will lie down beside you and hold you as you cry, laugh, rage, and breathe. It will feel like there is no end to what they can contain for you. They will hold the weight of you and your life and make you buoyant in it.