#9 What we kinda already know: On intuition
Maybe I should have walked by.
Usually, when someone is alone, reading, wearing black-out sunglasses we're supposed to take that as a sign they're busy and keep to ourselves. But sometimes we don't do what we're supposed to. We do what we feel like instead.
That morning the sun was blazing hot, my skin sticky like a glazed doughnut. I glanced down at her, edging myself into a small window of her line of sight and let her know I loved the book she was reading. She said nothing, and I lingered, like a middle-schooler with a lunch tray and an admirable if not idiotic about of hope, to see if she wanted to chill.
Maybe I should have walked by.
She said nothing.
But then, some ten minutes later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. "Hey," she said, "where are you from?"
There's something about the intimacy of a serendipitous conversation with a stranger.
It's why Malcolm Gladwell (of course) wrote a book about it and why "I talk to strangers" is a real meetup.com group. The murmur of what we know fades away. We’re invited into nothing but this. Like freshly fallen snow or a puppy who has snuggled up beside you in bed.
After telling her where I was from and us entertaining areas of commonalities, I said, "You know it's funny, I didn't mean to interrupt you but I feel like this book is coming back to me. I had to say something.”
She laughed gently, like a polite younger sister.
"Last week, I saw another woman with it who looked about the age I was when I first read it. I remember thinking, I bet I'd take something different away from it now. And now you, here, today. I’m gonna pick it up after class."
She told me a friend recommended it to her and reminded me with the stern whisper of a school principal that she was much older than me and yes, taking quite a lot away from it. She told me how much she loved the author's personal history. Did I know she was adopted? Back and forth, back and forth, our conversation see-sawed, every toss she sent my way igniting more of my attention, reminding me why this book, now, might especially resonate.
I’m approaching a year living in Brasil - a very-new-to-me country in the context of a global pandemic. It’s been so many things – confronting and inspiring to name a few. I always knew I couldn’t live my entire life living in Canada, but this sometimes unintelligible part of my life is hard to reconcile with what was otherwise impossible.
It just is.
I don’t know what you think about fate. Maybe in our own ways, in our everyday exchanges, we’re all unearthing our greater destiny. As I’m more inclined to believe, maybe we can’t help but have an intentional orientation to our experience. It’s innate, even, this idea that everything we think must be About something.
Regardless.
Some things happen and their significance is undeniable. God’s plan or otherwise.
The whole experience with this woman is interesting because the book that prompted the whole thing is about how we, as women, can reunite with our wildish instincts:
"Intuition provides options," Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph. D. writes, "When you are connected to the instinctual self, you always have at least four choices ... the two opposites and then the middle ground, and ‘taken under further contemplation’... Listen to the inner hearing, the inner seeing, the inner being. Follow it. It knows what to do next.”
Again, I don’t know about you but when I think about instincts, I think about reactions. I think about impulses that require taming, reactions that should be responses. I think about Viktor Frankl who said,
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
I think. I think. I think.
I think about human nature, about what, if anything, is universal and what’s in our own little hands.
But intellectualization can be a way out of our bodies, into our heads, into a world of reason, of should and shouldn’t. In this state, we're inclined to jump into believing either it’s all already written – have faith – or, even if this were true, it would be impossible for us to Know. Therefore, think Nothing in particular. Think. Think. Think.
The problem is, we can’t help but think about Things. Purpose, cause and effect, if not nothing but now this, and whatever comes next. Intentionality, the propensity for minds to be about something, is many things, but mostly it’s inescapable. Just because, for most of us, is still an invitation.
Back on the beach, engrossed in conversation with that woman, my swimming teacher beckoned me in from the shallow waters. Waving his arms, cupping giant, invisible holds of air. It was time for me to go.
“It was so lovely meeting you," I told her, adjusting my swim cap and making steps towards the shore.
“You too,” she said.
And just like that, a stroke of fate or simply happenstance faded to nothing but an anecdote, a little memory. In life, we’re all presented with opportunities when we can walk by or we can stop. But we can also flirt with the middle too, or we can try to listen to what’s already calling us. What we already know but can’t understand. We can try and let our intuition be its own form of knowledge. We can let it be something we already know.