Intuitivity
I have such an interesting relationship with the word “intuitive.”
I think it’s kinda mysterious and here’s why: I was thinking about the Meyers-Briggs personality inventory the other day. Intuitive is one of the categories a person can end up with in describing how they “know” the world. Opposite of sensate (which I think is similar to “clues gathering” or highly observational but in a sensate way), intuitive is more a “feeling” that something is happening or things are the way they are. It is true that I don’t have to observe something to know that a change is coming or that someone’s feeling particular way. I sense it. I’m fairly blown away that everybody does not know the world in this way. I like that I can’t explain how I know things…I just do.
But there’s a downside to this way of knowing the world. It can be torturous sometimes. Because very often I can know things are going on despite people trying to play it cool. Often weeks in advance of an announcement I just have a sense that something’s up…the last great example I have is that one of my committee members called me to her office to tell me she’s leaving the university. I knew she was leaving the university and, more interestingly, I knew the minute she called that this meeting–which she told me was about something else–was, in fact, to address this issue. There was no process in moving from not knowing to knowing. One day I just knew.
What I hate about it is that this intuitivity (my word I just made up) which I lovingly call “my gut” (as do most people) is very rarely wrong. Thus, when my gut speaks, I really am forced to listen…and accept. Which is particularly hard when my gut is sending me a message I’m not wanting to hear. This creates so much anxiety; in the end, it is just a gut reaction and my gut has been known to be wrong at times (afterall, I’m not a psychic). But it’s rare…and it gets rarer with age.
And I’ll tell ya…my gut and I are just not seeing eye to eye at the moment. I wish my gut would just get it together.