Don’t Fall In Love With The Messenger

Great guy, right timing, but he may not be your one

The divine intervention?

Let me ask you this: if you were an angel who had to steer the life of your beloved mortal in the right direction, how would you communicate? Dreams? Signs? Mail from unknown inbox? Facebook message?

With the human brain hard tuned to ignore the signs, you would be driving yourself up the wall to get even a ‘hello’ across credibly!

We have given many names to signs: gut, intuition, dream signals, patterns. I think sometimes signs may be in hard and flesh too, in human form. These people are placed strategically in our lives to nudge us towards our destiny. But sometimes, meeting and leaving them was how the story was meant to be. That’s where we usually fail.

Believe and you shall see

This wisdom has dawned upon me retrospectively. While not all failed love journeys have revealed their meaning to me yet, few had clear signs from the get-go. Heck, few had the signs I had prayed for, but when they transpired, my muggle brain got all muddled up.

Well then, how do you see the sign? And if you do, should you believe in it enough to take a hard life decision?

Like every interesting question that ever existed, this one also has an answer ‘it depends’. You will see the signs if you have willed them. It is in the most ambivalent, multiple-choice situations that we look up at the universe for signs. For all the applaud which human intelligence gets, we are, at the core, simple beings seeking simpler choices. Ambiguity throws us off.

Blink!

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis — Malcolm Gladwell

(Book- Blink: The power of thinking without thinking)

In every ambiguous situation, I have, as a rational human analytically dissected the choices, made pro-con lists if needed, and then after mind-numbing sessions, by the end of which I need a beer to calm my nerves, I sat down to listen to my gut. Or send a quick request to the universe for a sign.

And the signs did I get! Whether it was wishing for a sign if I should move out of a relationship which wasn’t bad enough but not going anywhere either, or deciding between a great job offer and moving to Spain for pursuing a second Masters’ program, I didn’t need. When I was looking for signs, I saw them. Clear as a blue sky.

Gut before the mind, or mind before the gut?

Now on to the fundamental question: should you believe in signs enough to take a hard life decision based on them?

While I may eventually decide based on my gut or the signs, but I sure as hell don’t start with it. And you shouldn’t too.

After I have over-thought and over-analysed and still failed at conclusively deciding anything, I have freed myself from the burden of not being ‘objective’. With the situation clearly out of control of my logical element, the other side takes over. You can call it gut or soul or heart or universe. The trick to knowing if the sign should be believed or not is to let it be. Let the options rest in your mind passively. Observe the remnant feeling. Remnant feeling is the feeling that peaks again and again. That is what the signs are leading you to.

Mish-mash of gut, heart and mind

Now, the trickiest part is this: many times, another human being is a sign. Has it ever happened to you that you meet someone and your life feels better? That person can be a lover or a friend or a colleague. I have people come in my life to move me out of a relationship, balance me when I was preparing for B-school admission or be a support in a rather difficult work environment.

Few of them remained in my life and many overstayed their purpose. It is impossible to see which from which in the beginning. And it should be this way too. Otherwise, if we knew leavers vs stayers from the start, our relationship would be rather transactional, based on what a person entering our life can add to it.

But then

The mistake I have made is to insist on their staying when it was a clear sign that they should go. I insisted because of the attachment that was built due to the purpose their presence fulfilled. This is the lesson I am beginning to learn. It may be a great person who came in my life when I needed him the most, but that shouldn’t be a reason for him to stay forever.

Sharing a quote by the great man of science, Albert Einstein:

I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am.

To trust the decision my intuition is leading me to, I needed to develop trust in my intuition first. Learning when to stop thinking and start believing is a hard lesson to learn and takes a while.

Believing in my intuition, signs, gut has helped me out of situations when I couldn’t rationalize. It has been worth the effort I would say :)