If you’re a nineties kid like me, then you probably heard this existential phrase all the time when you were coming of age: Get a life!

Some nosy teacher trying to tell you and your friends what to do after school hours? Get a life! Have a falling out with a friend who just seems too obsessed with you and what you’re doing? Get a life. Micromanaging parents who constantly try to live their life through yours? Once again: Get a life!

I cannot overstate how much existential peril one used to convey using this one phrase. We would torment ourselves over it. “Do I have a life? Like, a real one? What can I do to get a life?”

Because I am interested in Pluto and existentialism, I got curious about when this phrase became popular and how that might align with Pluto transits. Turns out, the phrase “get a life” got really big in the mid eighties when Pluto first entered Scorpio.

This is interesting because Scorpio season is Halloween. This astrological season is when we usually celebrate death, rot, and fermentation.

The phrase “get a life” means a number of things but also something really specific too. You might use it to tell people to start minding their own business or to grow a backbone. You might wonder if you’re someone who needs to get a life when you doubt whether you are doing things that give you joy. You might feel like you need to get a life when you’re working too much or when you’re not in control of your own choices.

Now that Pluto has made its way into Aquarius, I see another phrase get really big: Touch grass!

“Touch grass” seems to be really similar to “get a life.” It’s an insult but it’s also a self examination. You tell people to touch grass when they get too self absorbed or too obsessive over online events. People who aren’t touching grass are devoid of reality. They’re spending too much time alone and on their phones, those little engines of productivity that we like to keep in our pockets nowadays.

And you wonder if you’re touching grass enough too the same way you used to wonder if you need to get a life.

Aquarius season is also interesting. It’s the coldest time of the year when grass is very notably not growing. It’s when the big snows come and a lot of grass eaters struggle to survive because that snow covers the grass on the ground. Aquarius season is the worst time to try and touch grass. The phrase “touch grass” really started to come into popular usage during Pluto’s ingress to Aquarius.

Pluto is an existential planet. Existential phrases like get a life and touch grass help us ask ourselves questions about the amount of control we have over our own lives. Pluto is the astrological planet that is associated with control, power, and transformation. It’s a generational planet and tends to describe what one particular generation or time period is trying to change.

And the difference between these phrases is interesting. Get a life is about feeling dead inside. It’s about just going through the motions. Touch grass is about touching something alive, about getting offline and connecting with land. Grass is grain. Touching grass means that you are touching something that resources you.

Scorpio and Aquarius. Scorpio is about wanting to feel alive when you feel dead inside. Aquarius is about wanting to touch something that resources you during the coldest season of the year.

For my generation, “get a life” really sums it up. That one phrase expresses so much in terms of teenage angst, control, and purpose. I think that it’s kind of similar to what prior generations must have meant when they said, “stick it to the man!” I’m not sure when that phrase was most popular but it might have been during Pluto in Leo. For the current generation, that phrase seems to be “touch grass.”

I think that Pluto is a bit hard to describe. What does power, transformation, and control mean anyway? Next time you want to describe Pluto, just look for the existential phrase that your generation came up with. I think you’ll feel what Pluto means when you use and say that phrase. Get a life! I think that sums Pluto up pretty well.