Capricorn is the rare sign who upholds their zodiac stereotype to the letter.
Ruled by disciplined Saturn, Capricorns are methodical, ambitious, and work-obsessed. Though excellent at maintaining boundaries in emotional entanglements, their relentless compulsion to achieve pushes them beyond reasonable limits in professional pursuits. This combination results in a distinct personality archetype: Innately aware of their own intelligence and skill, Caps can appear unflappably secure, even coming off as arrogant to other signs stricken with greater susceptibility to imposter syndrome.
This accurate assessment of their own societal value is only possible, however, due to Cap's chronic fear of unworthiness. They know they can accomplish enough to satisfy themselves with their efforts of a day, a week, potentially an entire career…. but will they ever achieve enough to earn the fact of their own existence on a cosmic scale? Pragmatically, they realize this is an irrational, impossible motivation, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.
Capricorn season spans the turn of the Gregorian calendar, and always begins with a Solstice — winter north of the equator, summer down south. Even as they achieve astounding feats, stacking seemingly endless accomplishments, Capricorns can't catch a break from their own neurotic sense of drive. Fortunately for the rest of us, this intrinsic compulsion keeps Capricorn pushing forward and powering human society even as proper recognition of their season typically gets subsumed by a flurry of holiday celebrations.
Caps deserve their flowers, though! They can be a frustrating people to compliment: assurances of their value both seem redundant and invariably fail to alleviate their underlying insecurity. For other signs, praising a Capricorn can feel like enthusing about an ant when the rest of us are silly, lackadaisical grasshoppers by comparison. Nonetheless, Caps appreciate acclaim from the rest of us peons in their own bemused fashion, and we definitely owe it to them! Think about the specific arrangements of your own life: how fast would they fall apart without a certain Capricorn or two acting as load-bearing pillars for the overall structure? Now extrapolate that thought out to a societal level: without the dependable, everyday effort of Caps, we'd all be so screwed.
The most effective way to commend a Capricorn is to simply and respectfully acknowledge their efforts. Superhuman though they may seem, they find overweening amazement to be disingenuous, and they tend to be offended by performative astonishment at their productivity. (“People always ask me how I did all this stuff,” an accomplished Cap once told me while discussing her distaste for unrealistic work montage scenes in movies. “The ‘secret’ is, I just did it! It took forever, it sucked the whole time, and then it was done.”) This peek behind the Capricorn curtain reveals a no-fail formula to congratulate any Cap on the fruit of their most-recent labors: just say, “Damn, you did that!” Ultimately, they just want to be reminded that they have, indeed, successfully done stuff.
