"Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life."
-Paulo Coelho; The Alchemist
I am a young woman in a culture where trusting "Intuition" is often considered naïve and irresponsible. Part of this is particular to our culture of information technology and light-speed communication, in which Google-ing and Wikipedia crowd out “Intuition” as decision-making tools. Part of this trend extends even cross-culturally, and encompasses most generational interactions in which he young are expected to make choices for our personal lives and professional careers based on, as my Bank boss demanded of me, "a Plan."
Ask me for a dream, a goal, a vision of what I hope to become, and I am happy to answer. But a Plan? "How absolutely foolish!", I can't help but roll my eyes. Perhaps it took only my few African adventures to realize the foolishness of a Plan in the face of buses with no schedules (or transmissions), hospitals with endless wait lines, unpredictable provision of public goods and unreliable services. Living in places where a Plan is a fantasy, for the unpredictable obstacles lie at every next turn, one learns to instead employ Intuition. (For more on the dangers of Planning)
To my amusement, I recently turned 22 and was carded the same weekend buying tickets to a rated R movie. Perhaps I look seventeen, but my Intuition feels seventy.
Like every other ability, practice makes perfect, and it is the deliberate listening for a gut reaction again and again that has taught me to trust Intuition over Plans. I’ve certainly had and continue to make Plans; I wanted to study music production at Northeastern, travel and perfect my French, work exclusively on HIV/AIDS issues. But it was Intuition that urged me to choose NYU over a hometown school, to choose studying in Accra over Paris, to choose working at the Bank over an AIDS advocacy group. None of these life-path changing decisions were Planned, yet they have brought me closer and closer to what I feel is a life purpose.
What about the non-life-changing decisions, the everyday action and interactions– what does that Intuition sound like?
I heard it yesterday in the peeling away of sticky duct tape strips holding the Air Conditioning in my window (installed by my dear subletter – I can’t stand AC), as I rushed to get the machine out. I wrangled it out, set it down in the hall, and rushed back to the open window frame. And as I practically dove out into the open air of avenue A and 2nd street, I was struck by a moment to which that Intuition was leading me.
I sought the open air, but the air is never open here, I realized, it's always being shared. On this bustling corner we're all inhaling and exhaling – Basilio and the deli vendors downstairs, the bar hoppers across the corner, the dog and their walkers, the relentless-question-asking-toddlers and their stroller pushers, Emmanuel and his crew of homeless men hawking their trinkets to passersby. But it's not just the shared oxygen, as we all contribute our own necessary noises as well – drunken shouts, giggles and guffaws, children’s cries, beeping horns, loud transmissions, clunking moving carts and idling engines. And then we all contribute our scents – the wafting fried food out of Nicky's Vietnamese sandwich shop, to the pungent smell of detergent from the Laundromat, to the putrid dog poop and the sensuous perfume on that woman passing by.
As I laid down to sleep later in the night, I smiled, surrounded by these noises, smells, by the presence of all these people just two floors below, bustling around and attending to their lives and their business, as it all intertwines and interacts on the street corner. A fire truck from Ladder 11 blares out and speeds westward but it does not interrupt my peaceful pause, it is inherently part of it.
I ran this morning, past the Peachtree community garden where overgrown ivy crawls through the chain link fence. I ran past the Pigeons perched atop the lamppost, which is plastered with posters for TV shows and storage services. Past a “Life on Mars” film crew circus around the fountain on the east river, past conspicuous moving vans covered windshield to tailpipe with bold graffiti, past high brick walls tagged with "I CAN" and I" DREAM", past the Lillian Wald projects on FDR and past pooling puddles of who-knows-what-mystery-fluid. Past the few whistles from old men in wifebeaters, past Asian grandmothers mid-calisthenics, past an IDH (Interborough Displaced Hipster) biker clad in skinny jeans and plaid, meandering the poorly paved path.
Talk about a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life!
I followed my Intuition and have found myself part of an unPlanned togetherness, a communion of lives that did not necessarily Plan to live together, but do. And so now I try to listen to my Intuition as I think about life after this somewhat Planned year of Wagner and KCA. Summer in DC challenged me to consider a number of different options in the professional life I dream of – that of an effective public servant.
I watched “Street Fight” on the train ride home from DC, a documentary about the 2002 Newark Mayoral race between now-Mayor Cory Booker and then-incumbent Sharpe James. Though Cory's example as a public servant inspired me towards elected office, it also completely deflated my heart, watching the ruthlessness tactics of the incumbent and how the media's translation of the tricks pulled out by the Sharpe campaign shaped the race, as opposed to the issues or the needs of the constituents. Sharpe spun incredible lies so many times, so passionately, that they became truth to those who heard them. And why? He was fighting to defend the Plan he has laid out for himself, which Cory had come along to challenge.
People’s Plans for themselves will inevitably always come into conflict – over power, over resources, over land. And I feel uneasy thinking that people spend their lives communicating in a language that sets out these grand plans: rhetoric, lies, insecurities, and empty promises. I know this language will always be spoken, but I do hope that people can begin again to start hearing and listening to their Intuition, which is in a different language and a different message. Coelho grabs at the thought when he explains,
"There was a language in the world that everyone understood…. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. .... The most important part of the language that all the world spoke - the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart… it was love.”
So to conclude this blog, I cannot emphasize strongly enough this immense lesson re-learned:
Do what you love. Don't make a Plan to advance in salary or power, because then you advance the institutions that may not improve the world but hurt it, or you realize that in some way, a Plan has already been scripted for you, and to deter from that path of purpose is to lead an unfulfilling life.
In this “universal current of life” Coelho speaks of, a Plan must be the building of a boat, a lifejacket, a bridge or (shudder) a dam. Our attempts to control what is already written might be useful to making us feel safe and happy in the sort run. But “How absolutely foolish!", I can't help but roll my eyes. Following intuition is perhaps the most responsible thing I can do in a world so bogged down in distractions, advertisements, rhetoric, and confusion. Looking within to find clarity amidst the chaos seems to me far wiser than trying to forge through it unguided.
After a summer of realizing just how much our millions of personally prodded Plans are cluttering up a clear vision of what is even wrong in the first place, and after observing how dishonest people will be to achieve their Plan, I am tempted to feel discouraged about the potential for change – in public service and in our personal lives. But I ultimately settle on a preference that whether it causes me pain and suffering or joy and happiness in the short run, I would rather feel in tune with this universal current of life, than to work against it.
I think we need to be fiercely intelligent and know our facts when it comes to problem solving and decision-making, but effective solutions will take far more than facts and the Plans we build off of them. We all need to tune into our own Intuition in order to tap into that universal language of love if we ever want to share a meaningful existence with those around us.
"When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."
xo ko
-Paulo Coelho; The Alchemist
I am a young woman in a culture where trusting "Intuition" is often considered naïve and irresponsible. Part of this is particular to our culture of information technology and light-speed communication, in which Google-ing and Wikipedia crowd out “Intuition” as decision-making tools. Part of this trend extends even cross-culturally, and encompasses most generational interactions in which he young are expected to make choices for our personal lives and professional careers based on, as my Bank boss demanded of me, "a Plan."
Ask me for a dream, a goal, a vision of what I hope to become, and I am happy to answer. But a Plan? "How absolutely foolish!", I can't help but roll my eyes. Perhaps it took only my few African adventures to realize the foolishness of a Plan in the face of buses with no schedules (or transmissions), hospitals with endless wait lines, unpredictable provision of public goods and unreliable services. Living in places where a Plan is a fantasy, for the unpredictable obstacles lie at every next turn, one learns to instead employ Intuition. (For more on the dangers of Planning)
To my amusement, I recently turned 22 and was carded the same weekend buying tickets to a rated R movie. Perhaps I look seventeen, but my Intuition feels seventy.
Like every other ability, practice makes perfect, and it is the deliberate listening for a gut reaction again and again that has taught me to trust Intuition over Plans. I’ve certainly had and continue to make Plans; I wanted to study music production at Northeastern, travel and perfect my French, work exclusively on HIV/AIDS issues. But it was Intuition that urged me to choose NYU over a hometown school, to choose studying in Accra over Paris, to choose working at the Bank over an AIDS advocacy group. None of these life-path changing decisions were Planned, yet they have brought me closer and closer to what I feel is a life purpose.
What about the non-life-changing decisions, the everyday action and interactions– what does that Intuition sound like?
I heard it yesterday in the peeling away of sticky duct tape strips holding the Air Conditioning in my window (installed by my dear subletter – I can’t stand AC), as I rushed to get the machine out. I wrangled it out, set it down in the hall, and rushed back to the open window frame. And as I practically dove out into the open air of avenue A and 2nd street, I was struck by a moment to which that Intuition was leading me.
I sought the open air, but the air is never open here, I realized, it's always being shared. On this bustling corner we're all inhaling and exhaling – Basilio and the deli vendors downstairs, the bar hoppers across the corner, the dog and their walkers, the relentless-question-asking-toddlers and their stroller pushers, Emmanuel and his crew of homeless men hawking their trinkets to passersby. But it's not just the shared oxygen, as we all contribute our own necessary noises as well – drunken shouts, giggles and guffaws, children’s cries, beeping horns, loud transmissions, clunking moving carts and idling engines. And then we all contribute our scents – the wafting fried food out of Nicky's Vietnamese sandwich shop, to the pungent smell of detergent from the Laundromat, to the putrid dog poop and the sensuous perfume on that woman passing by.
As I laid down to sleep later in the night, I smiled, surrounded by these noises, smells, by the presence of all these people just two floors below, bustling around and attending to their lives and their business, as it all intertwines and interacts on the street corner. A fire truck from Ladder 11 blares out and speeds westward but it does not interrupt my peaceful pause, it is inherently part of it.
I ran this morning, past the Peachtree community garden where overgrown ivy crawls through the chain link fence. I ran past the Pigeons perched atop the lamppost, which is plastered with posters for TV shows and storage services. Past a “Life on Mars” film crew circus around the fountain on the east river, past conspicuous moving vans covered windshield to tailpipe with bold graffiti, past high brick walls tagged with "I CAN" and I" DREAM", past the Lillian Wald projects on FDR and past pooling puddles of who-knows-what-mystery-fluid. Past the few whistles from old men in wifebeaters, past Asian grandmothers mid-calisthenics, past an IDH (Interborough Displaced Hipster) biker clad in skinny jeans and plaid, meandering the poorly paved path.
Talk about a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life!
I followed my Intuition and have found myself part of an unPlanned togetherness, a communion of lives that did not necessarily Plan to live together, but do. And so now I try to listen to my Intuition as I think about life after this somewhat Planned year of Wagner and KCA. Summer in DC challenged me to consider a number of different options in the professional life I dream of – that of an effective public servant.
I watched “Street Fight” on the train ride home from DC, a documentary about the 2002 Newark Mayoral race between now-Mayor Cory Booker and then-incumbent Sharpe James. Though Cory's example as a public servant inspired me towards elected office, it also completely deflated my heart, watching the ruthlessness tactics of the incumbent and how the media's translation of the tricks pulled out by the Sharpe campaign shaped the race, as opposed to the issues or the needs of the constituents. Sharpe spun incredible lies so many times, so passionately, that they became truth to those who heard them. And why? He was fighting to defend the Plan he has laid out for himself, which Cory had come along to challenge.
People’s Plans for themselves will inevitably always come into conflict – over power, over resources, over land. And I feel uneasy thinking that people spend their lives communicating in a language that sets out these grand plans: rhetoric, lies, insecurities, and empty promises. I know this language will always be spoken, but I do hope that people can begin again to start hearing and listening to their Intuition, which is in a different language and a different message. Coelho grabs at the thought when he explains,
"There was a language in the world that everyone understood…. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. .... The most important part of the language that all the world spoke - the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart… it was love.”
So to conclude this blog, I cannot emphasize strongly enough this immense lesson re-learned:
Do what you love. Don't make a Plan to advance in salary or power, because then you advance the institutions that may not improve the world but hurt it, or you realize that in some way, a Plan has already been scripted for you, and to deter from that path of purpose is to lead an unfulfilling life.
In this “universal current of life” Coelho speaks of, a Plan must be the building of a boat, a lifejacket, a bridge or (shudder) a dam. Our attempts to control what is already written might be useful to making us feel safe and happy in the sort run. But “How absolutely foolish!", I can't help but roll my eyes. Following intuition is perhaps the most responsible thing I can do in a world so bogged down in distractions, advertisements, rhetoric, and confusion. Looking within to find clarity amidst the chaos seems to me far wiser than trying to forge through it unguided.
After a summer of realizing just how much our millions of personally prodded Plans are cluttering up a clear vision of what is even wrong in the first place, and after observing how dishonest people will be to achieve their Plan, I am tempted to feel discouraged about the potential for change – in public service and in our personal lives. But I ultimately settle on a preference that whether it causes me pain and suffering or joy and happiness in the short run, I would rather feel in tune with this universal current of life, than to work against it.
I think we need to be fiercely intelligent and know our facts when it comes to problem solving and decision-making, but effective solutions will take far more than facts and the Plans we build off of them. We all need to tune into our own Intuition in order to tap into that universal language of love if we ever want to share a meaningful existence with those around us.
"When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."
xo ko
