Call it a hunch, call it intuition, sometimes we just have a feeling we can’t ignore. But what happens when our instincts let us down?
To escape an unresolved work challenge, Archimedes went to the local baths. As he got into the water and noticed the liquid spilling over the edge, it happened. The mathematician jumped up and ran home naked, crying “Eureka! I’ve found it!” Over two millennia later, in 2010, it is Gwyneth Paltrow’s 38th birthday weekend in Italy. Her eureka moment is involuntary, like “the ring of a bell that has sounded and cannot be undone”. She knew her marriage was over. Soon after I read about this incident in her infamous conscious uncoupling essay, I saw a name on an email and knew I’d date that person, without knowing who they were or what they looked like. Whether it’s the Archimedes principle or a divorce from Chris Martin or love-at-first-email, intuition is a funny, evasive thing with human consequences.
Following these sudden realisations or hits of intuition used to be the way I lived: a bell would ring out and I’d run fully clothed but without fear from one opportunity to the next. It’s hard to quantify a “just knowing” in the body. If forced to, I’d say my intuition would be instant, inexplicable and irrational. Like if you told the nearest person what you’d just learned, they’d rigidly smile, get up and change seats. For example, I’ve known I’d work at a specific company after hearing it mentioned in a classroom; as with Archimedes, the idea for my first book dropped into my head fully formed; and like Paltrow, I’ve known jarringly, in an otherwise content moment, that a relationship was absolutely over. I’d get it with small, seemingly unimportant things, too. I’d think of a loved one I hadn’t spoken to in months and a minute later they’d call needing my help. This could sound like magical thinking or a collection of unremarkable coincidences. I sincerely don’t know how damning this phenomenon is to write about because, until recently, I hadn’t spoken in depth to anyone about it. But I do suspect that for many of us, intuition is not a completely foreign experience.
