Monday, May 20, 2013

Testing Intuition

Sometimes, I can't help myself. Intuition strikes, advises on a course, and I deliberately take off in the opposite direction. Call it a tendency to test intuition.

Case in point: A few weeks ago, I was leaving my apartment and about to lock the door. I got a very strong feeling to take an extra minute to go back inside, collect my "dance bag" (containing dance shoes, etc.) and bring it with me. I had no dance events scheduled for that night, so I didn't welcome the idea of having to lug around a bag for which I had no foreseeable use. However, I knew that if I dishonored the intuitive message, it would change the course of events for the rest of the day. I wondered how. For better or for worse? I consciously decided to ignore the strong feeling of intuition, just to see what would happen.

So there I am, after having driven to Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge, heading to my usual parking garage on Fulton Street. While on Park Row across from City Hall, I am stopped at a light. The green arrow permitting left turns appears and I am free to proceed onto Spruce Street. I hit the gas and begin to turn. Suddenly out of nowhere appears a car with out-of-state plates flying thru what for her was a red light. I slam on the brakes and just manage to stop in time to avoid a terrible collision. “Damn that was close!" I say to myself while thinking that if I had gone back for my dance bag an hour before, I would not have been put in that danger.

I make the left turn and proceed cautiously onto the garage, drop my car off, and start walking west to Broadway, along Fulton Street. A tall, dignified, middle-aged Asian man in a suit and tie, smiling broadly but looking lost, approaches, saying, "Excuse me. Where is 129 Fulton Street?" I look around to see where we are, and figure it out. Pointing northwest, I say, "Across the street, a couple of blocks down." He thanks me over and over and starts to cross Fulton Street, oblivious to traffic. A taxi cab comes barreling down the block and is about to run over the guy who is still waving overzealous thank-you’s in my direction. I point and yell, "Look out!" He slows down, turns, and watches the cab race by right in front of him. A couple of steps more and he would have been road-kill. I could not help but think that another potential disaster would not have manifested if I had followed my intuition earlier in the morning.

I'm on my guard for the rest of the day, which goes by uneventfully. I leave for work and am driving home. While on the Prospect Expressway, there is traffic merging on my right. A huge tractor-trailer is coming up slow, and I let him enter in front of me. As he is really dragging, I decide to pass him. There is no traffic on my left and I begin to change lanes, accelerating. Suddenly the trailer is speeding up, cutting into what is now my lane and about to cause a collision. I slam the horn furiously and hit the brakes. He veers back into his lane, where he belongs, and the third potential disaster of the day is averted.

Contemplating all this, I came to wonder, "Would things have been better if I had heeded the seemingly illogical but undoubtedly strong intuitive impulse to retrieve my dance bag before heading into work?" As far as I can tell, the answer is yes. Because at least two and possibly three near disasters (the evening event did not have the same time proximity) would have not manifested.

Then again, what would my day have been like if I had honored the feeling of intuition? Obviously, there is no way to tell for certain. But I have decided to trust my intuition more freely.

Trusting intuition has often been an issue for me. In the past, the problem has been how to distinguish true intuition from the many annoying (and untrustworthy) impulses and moments of indecisiveness that often seem to be masquerading as intuition. The key, I see now, is in perceiving how strong the feeling is. The stronger the feeling, the more likely true intuition is present.

Lessons learned, I vow to put my new-found knowledge into action as future opportunities arise. I didn’t have to wait very long to be tested. The next night, while driving home in the pouring rain, my dashboard tire-gauge light is indicating low air in one (unidentified) tire. I need to find an air pump. A strong sense of intuition advises me to go to the gas station on Avenue T and Coney Island Avenue, which I rarely frequent. Logic says, “Don’t go there, go to your regular place where they know you.” But since the intuitive message is strong, I ignore the logic and proceed as intuition tells me. I get to the Avenue T station and the place is closed for renovation. I can’t help but think, “What the [heck]?” before proceeding to my regular gas station two blocks away on Avenue V.

I arrive at the Avenue V station and pull in to gas up. From the vicinity of the pumps, I can see that there is a sign on the air hose machine saying “Out of order.” I feel an urge and double-check with the gas station attendant about the sign. He seems to say in broken English that the air pump is actually working, and offers a mostly unintelligible explanation as to why there is a sign saying, “Out of order.”

After the attendant fills my tank, I proceed to the air pump and get out of the car to check the tires. I see immediately where the problem is: the front left tire has a screw right in the middle (where the rubber meets the road). I think, “If I had not followed my intuition, the screw would never have been so obviously positioned as it is now.” In the pouring rain, I begin to put some needed air in the tire while glancing across Avenue V. I notice that a new “Flats Fixed” place is open for business. There, my tire will be repaired cheaply ($10 with tip!), quickly, and easily—the repairman didn't even have to take the tire off the car to plug the hole, since the screw was so visible, accessible, and easily removed.

What I get from this screw-in-the-tire adventure is that things would not have worked out so well had I not heeded my intuition. Again, no way to prove it, but that is my sense.

Message to self:  Pay attention to what you readily identify as “true intuition,” that discernibly strong sixth sense communication advising on a particular course of action.  And then, as has been said by sages across time, "Trust your intuition."

Perhaps I should have known that all along, but sometimes we have to learn things for ourselves, experience being the best teacher.

Thanks for reading.