I Have A Favourite Planet. And It's Not The One I Live On.

I have a favourite planet. It’s not the one I live on.

Earth has its moments, and at least half of them are quite beautiful. But my allegiance lies some 2.7 billion kilometres away, with a pale blue-green giant that rolls through the solar system at a frankly ridiculous angle. It’s a planet that I believe has important things to teach us.

I’m talking about Uranus.

Ok, go ahead. Get it out of your system. The name is a comedic gift to the adolescent within all of us.

If you put your head between your legs, what planet do you see?

Uranus!

This is why it is impossible for Uranus to get above its station. No matter how impressive its ring system, no matter how much its 28 moons amaze us, or how extraordinary its atmospheric chemistry, someone, somewhere, will always bring it back down to earth.

I actually feel there is something oddly reassuring about a planet that refuses, on a structural level, to take itself too seriously.

What I love most about Uranus, and what I think we could all learn from, is that it rotates on its side. While the other planets spin more or less upright like well-behaved tops, Uranus tilts at roughly 98 degrees. It doesn’t just lean a little. It commits.

Scientists believe this tilt was caused by a colossal collision with an Earth-sized object billions of years ago. Some interstellar smash that knocked the planet sideways and kept it there. And rather than being diminished, Uranus simply carried on.

I find this deeply relatable. My own trajectory has not been what you’d call conventional. I spent years standing in front of rooms full of strangers, attempting to make them laugh. A career that is itself a kind of controlled chaos.

Stand up comedy rewards the sideways view and the unexpected angle. The willingness to approach something from a direction that nobody saw coming. Audiences don’t laugh at things they already know. They delight in the collision between the familiar and the completely unforeseen. Very Uranian.

In astrology, Uranus is the planet of revolution. Sudden change. Breakthroughs that arrive unannounced and rearrange the furniture of your life. It governs originality, disruption, and thinking that cracks old patterns open.

I didn’t have much interest in astrology until, on the recommendation of a friend some 40 years ago, I went to see an astrologer. A professional. I had never noticed this woman living inside my head, but apparently she had been there my entire life. She presented an uncannily accurate analysis of one A. Ackroyd.

One thing I learned was that I was born with Uranus in Leo in the fifth house. Translation: obsessed with creative innovation, personal reinvention, and ways of seeing things that some people consider slightly batty. True that.

But I’ve found that a little bit of crazy is more advantage than liability. Some people may see you as a weirdo with nutty ideas. Yet others see you as interesting, alive, and original. I like those people.

Astrologically speaking, Uranus is currently on the move, this time into Gemini. For those who follow such things, it signals a period of rapid change in how we think, communicate, and connect. New ideas, conversations, and ways of understanding each other.

Whether you see astrology as a literal force or simply a poetic way of making sense of life, the symbolism feels timely. The old ways of thinking are failing us in a fairly spectacular fashion. We desperately need fresh perspectives to change the script.

Hey world, you need a good boot up your…well, you know.

My love for Uranus is, at its heart, a love for eccentricity. For the planet that got knocked sideways and made it work. For the butt of a joke that turns out, on closer inspection, to be full of wonders.

Here is what I hope.

As humanity’s next phase unfolds, cosmically influenced or not, I hope we see a galaxy of beneficial breakthroughs. In medicine, technology, creativity, in the way we treat each other, and in the story we are creating together. Let’s shake loose the stale thinking that has kept us stuck in our failure to envision a more radiant future.

And I hope that when we look up at the night sky, we remember that one of those distant points of pale blue light is a planet rolling along on its side.

Letting us all know that the thing that knocks you sideways can be the very thing that makes you interesting.

And that there is more than one way to move through the universe.

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Thanks for reading and all the best - Anthony

anthonyackroyd.life

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