I’m not a particularly superstitious person. Oh, I don’t mind the occasional silly bit of mystical speculation (IS the full moon making people act this way? Is Friday the 13th always unlucky, or is it just coincidence that I spilled my coffee on my work outfit and got bad news from a relative? I keep hearing this thing...is it trying to tell me something?), but I’m not basing my decisions on those musings. As a realist (and not just a regular, run-of-the-mill realist, but someone who deals in fact-based info for a living, grew up in a fairly secular humanist kind of home, and thinks science is the bee’s knees), I know these things aren’t OBJECTIVELY true.
But that doesn’t keep them from feeling subjectively true, at least in the moment. I think humans are prone to this kind of thinking. We’re always noticing coincidences, picking up patterns amidst the chaotic swirls of our lives, trying to make sense of things that just don’t make sense. And I will be the first to admit that every so often, it’s kind of satisfying to skip the reasoning and cut straight to the wild, baseless speculation. I can’t count the times I was looking for some kind of elusive “sign” that would signal that a particular choice or course of action was the right one.
Take quitting smoking, for instance. There were quite a few years while I was contemplating a quit, but—because I hadn’t truly acknowledged the need to do so, nor was I ready to face the difficult process itself—it never got any further than a half-assed attempt to cut back to a “reasonable” number of smokes a day, and a vague sense that I should be looking for a sign from The Universe that it was time.
And strangely enough, when I actually DID decide to quit, on little more than a whim and a bad case of Ashtray Mouth after a marathon chain-smoking session during a big work deadline, it was because a casual comment by my then-boss somehow registered with me as a sign. Actually, THE Sign. The one I’d been waiting for. The right suggestion (QUIT! NOW!) at just the right time: when I felt crappy and knew why, and was ready at long last to be done with it. Switch flipped. I had my sign and my sign said: STOP.
I did.
Maybe you’re like me...just waiting for The Sign. The one that points you toward something new and better.
Who’s Your Little GUS Buddy?
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