May 24

Who you are

You pick up other people fast. Their phrases, their accents, their mannerisms, the exact way a colleague says the word fine. Some of it is comedy and all of it is accurate, because you cannot copy someone without having listened to them properly first. People feel understood around you, and what they are actually feeling is closely observed.

You use it to move between worlds. You can talk like your family at lunch and like your colleagues by two, and both sets of people assume you belong entirely to them. That is a real skill and it has opened doors. It also means very few people have heard you say something in a voice that is unmistakably and only yours.

Your gifts

• Range. You can meet almost any group on its own terms within about ten minutes.
• Accurate listening. You cannot copy someone convincingly without having paid them real attention.
• Translation. You explain one kind of person to another in words they will actually accept.

Your shadow

Copying is also excellent cover. When a subject gets close to you, you slip into somebody else's manner and the moment passes without anything of yours being said. Friends of twenty years describe you as easy company and cannot tell you what you believe about anything important. That is not their failure of attention. It is a screen you built on purpose.

Your soul work

Speak plainly, in your own manner, to the person most likely to argue back. Your soul work is using the range as an offer rather than as a hiding place, so that the people who love you know at least three things you actually think.

Days you get along with

Your sign

The third sign carries the gift of curiosity and the burden of its own quickness. Gemini is the zodiac learning to speak, and learning to land.

Someone else

Look up another birthday

Check a friend's day, or your partner's, and send it to them.