I’m stuck daydreaming about love. How do I stop missing out on real life?

I know that sometimes your Piscean Venus can feel like a curse, but I promise you, it’s a gift from the Cosmic Mother. Hear me out. The capacity to feel deeply, especially in the realm of love, is one of the most transcendently human experiences that mortal beings can have. Many people wish they could feel as profoundly as you do. They employ all manners of external stimuli and self-optimization techniques to approach even a fraction of what your heart is naturally capable of. Thoughts and prayers to them. But that capacity to feel deeply, especially when that feeling is the heart-wrenching universal antic that is love, brings with it some degree of suffering.

In Buddhism, bodhicitta is, essentially, a desire to attain enlightenment in order to free all beings from suffering. To reach that place where your desire is to benefit others altruistically — which is what love is, at its core — one must make intimate contact with the root of that suffering. This is the X Games of empathy. And empathizing that deeply hurts. It takes souls many incarnations to attain enlightenment. But having Venus in Pisces is like if your heart came programmed with a directed-by-Sofia-Coppola-dead-wife-montage to glimpse into that possibility.

What I’m trying to say is this: The yearning that feels like a burden is also your spiritual superpower. Your inclination toward dreaming, and how easily you are consumed by it, is your heart’s way of creating not just a gorgeous life for yourself, but a more rose-tinted world for everyone. We need people like you. If your dreams are feeling more like escapism (the flip side of Venus in Pisces), all that means is that they need gentle focus and loving direction. Write them out, sing them, move your hips and open your chest while speaking them aloud. Allow the dreams to flow like water through your body, so they don’t drown you. Honor them with the space they need to feel alive. But don’t miss the point of caring so wholly in the first place — to have a human experience on this dense, fleshy plane.

While you’re doing that, ground yourself in practices that remind your Olympic athlete of a loving soul that you are, indeed, bony and bloody (beautiful!). Practice meditation, even if it’s just going for a walk without music to observe breath and step. Delight in rituals that engage the senses, like slowly moving a mouthful of Champagne around your tongue, or lighting palo santo in the dark and letting its smoke envelop you. Conjuring fantasies is one of humanity’s most ancient arts — a sacred creative practice — but without earthly rooting, the symphony is incomplete. You’ll never miss what’s meant for you. The Cosmic Mother hears your heart, and Her timing is always perfect. Trust in it. Don’t miss out on the shapes the lightning paints the clouds with because you’re too busy swimming in puddles.