We were supposed to have a fine dining experience…
5 minute read
We were supposed to have a fine dining experience, but we ended up having a frozen gluten free pizza at home. But clearly, I am skipping some context here, so let’s go back in time for a moment.
I had the pleasure of being invited to stay at my friend’s guest house after her recent move to Florida. We both agreed we didn’t want to overly plan anything for the week but rather allow adventure to naturally arise. And rise it did.
We decided Tuesday evening would be a great night to go out for a fine dining experience in St. Armands Circle at a restaurant we both were excited about. As it neared closer to the time we would need to leave to make the reservation, it started to rain.
What’s important to understand is that this was no regular rain. Florida is known for almost daily rain that comes and then goes away without issue. This was not that kind of rain. We had no idea as we changed into our “night out” dresses and diddy-bopped on out with our umbrellas to get into her Mini Cooper.
As we closed the doors, we were challenged to get our umbrellas in without soaking ourselves as the rain came down hard and plentiful. My friend paused for a moment and said something along the lines of; “Maybe we should take the Subaru”. I noticed her demeanor when she said it and at the same time, I was connecting to my experience of Florida rain from my past experience. Sure, it was coming down, but it wouldn’t last that long, I thought. I didn’t think much about it as I responded to her with something passive and dismissive like “whatever you think”, or “we’ll be okay” or something like that. Truth be told, I don’t remember what I said. I only remember sitting in the passenger seat of the car hearing her say those words, me responding (without awareness of what I really said) and then we started the car and we were on our way.
It poured down rain all the way to the restaurant. She pointed out the direction of the bay, but we couldn’t see it through all the rain. When we finally arrived at the restaurant, we both started to realize this was no normal Florida rain. We found a parking spot but wound up sitting inside the car because it rained so hard we couldn’t read the sign that gave instructions to pay for parking. With every car that drove by us a literal wave of rainwater hit us. As she focused on trying to read the instructions, I looked in the side mirror to try and gauge when we could make a run for it without getting hit by a wave of dirty street rain water from a passing vehicle.
Literal minutes went by and we watched the water inch up on a car across from us. We recognized, if we even tried to get out of the car and go to the restaurant, she was going to saturate her shoes and we would be soaked. I didn’t mind so much, wearing my Old Navy camel fake leather flip flops and she mentioned she could take her shoes off to which I said I didn’t like that idea for fear she would cut herself (safety first, you know). After a while of trying to navigate this situation while watching the water inch up with each minute, we decided it wasn’t worth it and we would doctor up the frozen pizza she had in the freezer at home.
As we attempted to leave the shopping area, we must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque and we found ourselves in the middle of the road in a neighborhood with the water rising deep and fast. So much so, the Mini Cooper stalled. Not once, but several times.
I will say both of us kept our cool during the situation. Here we were dressed up in our cute dresses and girly shoes and we were stalled in the road with the water rising at a fast and furious rate. Not the adventure we had hoped for, but this was reality.
We did manage to get the car started and get home, but at a large cost. The car was towed to a local service station for assessment. She was lucky that her car wasn’t as badly damaged as it could have been given as much water as we were in. I am convinced that the tiles she had in her trunk was the saving grace that kept that Mini from being lifted up by the water and us floating off (which was the scenario of a mini copper swept off the road from the water captured in a photo in the next day’s news story). The gentleman at the service station told us how lucky she was her repairs were so minor. A Mercedes that came in due to the same rain would cost that owner $19,000 for a new engine due to water damage. I wondered if his intuition spoke to him or if he was blindly ignorant like I was.
Simply put…we were lucky.
The irony of it all is that the night before I was sharing with my friend a lesson that I have come to understand from an experience I had over the last couple of years. That lesson was to fully and completely trust my intuition when it speaks to me; otherwise it costs me dearly.
My friend’s intuition was speaking to her to take the other car, but we didn’t listen. Instead, we got a bit more of an expensive adventure than we bargained for. Matter of fact, the local weather forecasters referred to this as a 1,000 year storm. Of all the weeks I could have picked to visit my friend, I picked the one with the most rain and the 1,000 year storm!
Now here’s the thing.
My spidy-senses were not clued into anything when we got into the Mini
Cooper, but hers was. For some reason (maybe perhaps my passive response
to her words, or maybe a thought of “oh it will be okay”, whatever it was), we didn’t
listen to her intuition. I didn’t even
know it was her intuition until we almost floated off the road when the engine stalled
(the first time), but she knew it. She
felt it.
The good news is we got home safely. And
yet the irony (or so it seems ironic) that just a day after I am explaining how
I recognized my suffering was due to my ignoring my intuition, she was granted
a similar experience.
Now, let me be clear – neither of us recommend ignoring your intuition. We could give a workshop on the costs of doing just that! Instead, what has me curious is how quickly we can dismiss our intuition because sometimes it doesn’t make sense, or we can be swayed with logic or sweet words of assurance and persuasion. Our culture doesn’t value intuition much. Our left brains want data, facts and timelines and cognitive thinking tends to run the show most of the time. And it certainly has its place in our lives, after all, we had to be in that left brain mode to make the reservation and follow directions to get there.
But all too often, we silence that little voice inside of us that doesn’t use words, but senses and feels. More appropriately stated, it receives. And that perhaps, is why we sometimes don’t trust it, because we don’t “always” have cold hard facts to state we know it for sure…except, we sense it. We receive it.
When I reflect back on times when I listened to my intuition, I can observe myself staying fully in my authentic integrity. I don’t have a sense of grasping what the outcome will be because, honestly, I don’t need to know it. I simply “feel” that sense of integrity at a whole body level and I receive it fully without trying to change it.
When I haven’t listened to my intuition, I suffer deeply. And when I suffer, I can trace my thoughts, feelings, and actions back to the point of ignorance when I didn’t trust myself. What I know for sure is that I don’t care how crazy I may seem, I want to live the rest of my life divinely connected to my own wisdom. Even if that means getting out of a perfectly good car and getting into another one. Hindsight being 20/20, those hunches are lifesaving.
Have you ever dismissed your intuition?
What does it “feel” like for you to have your intuition speak to you?
How are you connecting to your inner wisdom?