I remember the exact moment when my Saturn return started. I was getting off the train from my job which was to coordinate community programming across a couple of New York boroughs. It was dark outside. That night, there was some kind of community event that I had been looking forward to. It was lunar new year themed, something very queer and Asian. That must have been why it was so cold that day.

The event was called off. Something about a pandemic starting. Uh oh—that sounded serious.

You see, I grew up with the cohort of people who all have our Saturns in Aquarius. Me and most of my same age friends all have Saturn in Aquarius. We’re the annoying generation who grew up thinking that progressivism and community and friendship would heal the world and make it all better.

You have to keep in mind the social context that my generation was coming out of. We were millennials trying to differentiate ourselves from the gen x people. Back when we were kids, physical violence, sexual assault, and good old racism was regularly seen on TV. And people laughed at it. We didn’t discuss it. It wasn’t like today. It was mass media, which everyone knew was brainwashing you, trying to revoke its ties to American puritanism through one parental advisory sticker at a time.

My generation is obsessed with having good friends. We are also obsessed with being good enough for our friends. We are the Saturn in Aquarius generation.

Funny thing is, a good deal of us grew up pretty lonely. That’s the thing about Aquarius. It likes the idea of people but it’s not so keen on actual living and breathing real people all up in your face like that. My generation, we still grew up latch key and running around the neighborhood at night when we were younger. But, after we got older, things started to change.

The age of surveillance began in the family and the home. During my adolescent years, headlines about security ran in all of the newspapers. Some people were told to keep their kids at home because the drugs and the pregnancies would get them. My family, we were paranoid about avoiding racism. All the Muslims and the Sikhs we knew were getting beaten up. Being Chinese, we weren’t sure if it applied to us.

I think that’s why my generation romanticizes friendship so much. We had it when we were younger and we lost it when we got older. That’s Saturn in Aquarius for you.

When I got off the train that evening, I realized that an era had ended. You see, the years between 2016 to 2020 were a special time in Brooklyn. There were all of these cool workshops about transgressing humanism, about digital portals from South America to Nigeria, about radical medicines and plant friends. That was the cultural moment when qtpoc was still a thing. In other cities, all kinds of people were building networks. We wanted to queer everything.

Then, reality hit. It was like we had all of the ideals of friendship but none of the infrastructure. I was doing these youth arts programs and the kids started to drop out of school because their parents were dying. I was also doing these senior citizen arts programs and those people weren’t scared at all. They didn’t stay in the house either. I would get them groceries sometimes but they were already stocked up with pantry items. Back before the pandemic, these elders would tell me about boiling dogs and cats during the lean times.

I’m getting sidetracked. This is an article about Saturn in Aquarius. Each generation has our own struggles. We all have our own pace. We each have things that only we can see. For Saturn in Aquarius, a lot of that has to do with living in an era where the future is marketed towards you but taken from you one technological innovation at a time.

A lot of us felt betrayed by our friends that year—2020, the year when Saturn hit Aquarius. A lot us started to ask questions about what friends are willing to age with us.

Back before Facebook, no one thought that a corporation could somehow own your friendships. The internet was the place where you could talk to creepy older guys and conspiracy theorists. How could any of that be worth anything? But friendship is extremely valuable to those who see with dollar signs in their eyes. Friendship is the thing that makes the future possible.

So, people with Saturn in Aquarius today, we were marketed the idea of friendship. All the while, these tech guys were monetizing human connection and profiting off of the alienation. That’s why we idealize friendship so sincerely. That’s why we freaked out in 2020, because we felt betrayed by people who we put on a pedestal.

Did I mention that Saturn is domicile in Aquarius? This is where the cold and dry planet goes home. In astrology, Saturn is the hermit. Aquarius is the sky and the sky is blue because it is miles and miles of pure distance. Is Saturn in Aquarius bone dry and sarcastic? Yes. Does Saturn in Aquarius prefer to do its own thing on its own time? Yes. Does Saturn in Aquarius want to be your friend? Sometimes.

Some people will say that Saturn in Aquarius is domineering simply because it is a Saturn that is in its own rulership. I’d say that Saturn in Aquarius wants to be friends very much but it’s also used to a specific loneliness and will harbor the secret desire for their friends to be conscious about the same thing as we are. Maybe that’s the segmentation in our internet derived communities. That’s alienation turned currency.

The most radical thing about Saturn is that it ages you. When you age, you’re no longer so susceptible to youthful follies. You no longer feel like you have to be special and you don’t worry as much about whether you’re making all of the right choices as much. When you age, you realize that you’re just like all of the other old farts that you spend a lifetime criticizing.

And humanity is beautiful. Humanity is terrifying and beautiful. Yes, even the people who piss you off. That’s another thing about maturing. Your brain starts to shrink so that your emotions feel smaller. More manageable. Your idealism about friendship falls apart but your tolerance for real people starts to grow. And then you start to realize that all of the preciousness that you exhibited around hope is really just nothing. Hope only means something if you can back it up with action. So, you bank less on hopeful idealism and more on doing things when you can with people.

Saturn in Aquarius matures when we realize that the underbelly of idealism is nihilism. You can have both swirling together, worrying too much about being a good community member while hunched over with shame, or you can figure something else out. Stop worrying about whether you’re a good friend. Saturn in Aquarius worries about being good a lot. If you’ve cared enough to show up, then you’re good enough. No amount of intentional distance or good boundary setting can protect you from the social danger of alienation.

I’m talking to myself now. That’s why my voice got so harsh and critical just now. Another part of Saturn in Aquarius, I suppose. We’re a bit hard on ourselves. This is Saturn, the distant one, in its home sign. We want to be socially responsible! We want to create communal futures! We say all of this out loud but we don’t say the last part—we want to do all of these cool friendship things all the time because we are very, very lonely.

Here’s something else about friendship. Friendship is sometimes slang for low commitment. We will say that we are “just friends” with someone to discount our sense of commitment to that relationship. And yet, as bell hooks reminds us, many of us experience our firsts in friendship—our first big fight, our first big declaration of love, our first promise.

I can finish this article with some fancy words now if you want them. Saturn in Aquarius is about integrating individuality and collectivism, about interdependence. Sure. But I’m also Saturn in Aquarius. It’s not that easy. Saturn in Aquarius is about friendship. Friendship is a good idea, probably the best that human beings have come up with so far. How do we mend it after we lose it?