In the mid-seventies, I was a night shift manager of a now defunct restaurant. In the mid-eighties I was fascinated by the top 100 stocks of the Dow Jones sector of the Stock Market. Now, in the late two-thousands, I have my life, and I am very happy with it. Over the years, across different fields, and areas of interest, one thing has remained consistent. The cycle of the moon, especially the new moon, and full moon has an interesting effect on many people, myself included.
As a local restaurant manager, I would dread full moon nights. I watched men who came in to eat as good friends enter into fist to cuff fights over who was going to pay the check. I broke up a fight one night where one man was trying to drown his friend in a bowl of chicken noodle soup, because his friend insisted he was going to leave the tip.
Tracking the S&P 100 in the middle to late eighties before computer controlled trading, I would watch the S&P become very unstable during both the new and full moons. The Dow would take its biggest drops during these times, and its biggest gains in between.
People come home, have a serious fight with their spouse, and make their children cry over something little thing that would not amount to anything at another time. I have heard people make comments to their coworkers that move them well to the bottom of the ‘A’ list. During the full moon any dispute anywhere can lead to more serious situations than the situation warrants. Many minor disputes between drivers on our streets has led to immediate, and sometimes very violent road rage.
I have observed these scenarios month after month, year after year, for as long as I have paid attention to the state of the moon. Normally, as soon as the lunar cycle is moving out of a new, or full moon phase, people calm down, and normal life returns. But when we are moving into the new or full moon, life becomes pretty stressed pretty quickly.
It is time for all of us to take a more active approach to these times of the month. Mark these dates on your calendar, buy a lunar calendar and track the lunar cycle, or pull the information off the internet. If you know it is a few days before a full moon, or to a lesser extent a new moon, and something happens to makes you suddenly angry, you now know why.
What I have found that works best for me during full moon days, is not to react to anything that happens suddenly until I have had time to think about it. If I am driving and someone cuts me off, instead of pulling into the other lane and stepping on the gas to come up even with them to flip them off, I do nothing. Not that I would, but it paints a clear picture of some people’s reactions on full moon days and nights over perceived infractions of driving etiquette.
If I am at out in public and something happens, I do the the same thing, I let it go. If you are with family or coworkers, and you become irritated, either leave the situation, change the subject, or quit talking. I can almost guarantee, that in a few more days, you will be happy you did nothing. Because by then you will realize it was not serious, it was brought about by the moon. Almost any time, and especially during a full moon, you will thank yourself later for being quiet, more often than you will if you react in whatever way comes to mind at the moment.
Just because another person can not control their emotions is not a good reason to lose control of your emotions. It takes some practice, or it did for me, but once I learned to react less and think more during full moon days, the happier I was. It also became easier during the remainder of the month to not simply react to situations but to think first.
Happy Howling!
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