.SOMETIMES RAW.

Trust your instincts. Go with your gut! Regardless of the vernacular, I love to romanticize intuition. The feeling, which many call “a deep knowing”, is characterized by understanding something with little to no explanation. It is why some people avoid specific alleyways, why others turn down seemingly perfect jobs, or why two lovers marry after six months: Some just know. But what about the times when I don’t have that level of clarity? What if I ask my intuition for guidance and get nothing, or worse, conflicting answers? Is it as simple as looking inward? How can I decipher something so illogical and yet so crucial?

A couple of times, I was debating whether to stay in a relationship or not. Breaking up sounded horrible, but it felt good. Something told me that the relationship just wasn’t right. But this feeling was quieter than anxiety and rather a hum of a clothes dryer as opposed to a shrieking kettle and thus hard to trust. Over time, it downright tormented me. I wanted to know whether the voice I was hearing was fear, anxiety, my gut, my brain, or simply something else. In talking through the predicament with a friend, she asked, “What does your gut say?” Though well-intentioned, the question led to a different type of torment. Intuition became my obsession. I read books, research articles and more but everything always led me back to the same conclusion: My relationship was not working. This bothered me, and I so badly wanted to prove it wrong, a contradiction of emotions that fueled my anxiety, making it more difficult to take action.

The dictionary’s definition of intuition is “being able to understand something immediately, without any conscious reasoning.” I interpret this as no pro-con lists, no asking friends for guidance because I just know. The feeling is sometimes difficult to distinguish from fear, which is defined as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat.” Though technically quite different, both feelings stem from a place of protection and can be experienced in similar ways, like for example fear of abandonment. So how can I tell the difference? Am I leaving because I am afraid or because it is the right thing to do?

I stumbled across an article by psychologists at the University of New South Wales in Australia who ran a series of experiments in an effort to quantify intuition and analyzed how much “nonconscious emotional information” dictates our decision making. The study illustrated that intuition increases one’s accuracy in interpreting and outcome, but it also revealed that similar to using logic or reason, we become better at using intuition over time. The psychologists suggest that the best way to reintegrate intuition is to have a dialogue with it, to pay attention to our random, seemingly nonsensical hunches that tell us when something is wrong when to call a friend, or even when to wear a certain outfit.

Eventually, the gut feeling regarding my relationship became too strong to ignore, and we broke up. But once I was out of the relationship, I worried that it had been the wrong decision to leave, and strived to rekindle that sense of knowing that led me to end the relationship in the first place. Shouldn’t I have had more clarity after I researched the f*** out of intuition? Apparently not. And during moments of crisis, it can be harder to hear intuition speak because I was obsessed with making the right decision and choice.

So, I guess intuition is steady and rational, while the response to it might not be. Decision-making such as calling our texting an ex, might also spur anxiety, which can ultimately separate from the calm hum of intuitive thought. In this case, I guess it might be best to take action and know that intuition will come when and where it needs to. I may not be 100 percent sure about a decision but sometimes 70 percent is enough to pull me to a save shore where uncertainty is okay. It is not about having all the answers, but rather using the information I have to make the best decision I can.

Just in case you have not noticed: Christmas is around the corner. Years ago, my Christmas gift-giving approach was a lot different from now. Sometimes, I felt obligated to give material items to attempt to make up for the time I didn’t spend with people I love. Usually, little thought went into it because I felt obligated to give anything, just for the sake of giving. I purchased gifts without asking questions such as: What is the purpose behind giving this particular gift? Will the recipient find value in this gift? Is this something they need? I bring all this up because we’re on the precipice of consumption season. That time of year when all the stores and all the brands and all the websites rely on us to buy shit-loads of shit for both ourselves and our people.

Because of this, I changed how I handle gift-giving. I tend to avoid physical gifts. I love to give gifts of experience, or, if I give material things, I give consumables, such as a bottle of wine, cheese, coffee, chocolate or homemade chocolate liqueur. For me, it should be something someone can use, or, if it is an experience, it is a memory that can be shared: concert/movie/theater tickets and such. A great gift is also an evening spend together cooking, talking in the kitchen, while enjoying a bottle of wine out of new wine glasses. It sounds cliché until you actually do it, and then you will realize how awesome it is. The simple things.

How I make Christmas and shopping more meaningful: I avoid big shopping weekends to buy things (Black Friday etc.). Overall, for many, consumption is an unquenchable thirst and retailers and manufacturers know this too well. I rather support local businesses, friends, and people in my community and those who make a difference. If you could receive only one Christmas present this year, what would it be? The answer for me is simple: time. Another great gift is presence. You see, the people I care about and love mean much more to me than a fancy gadget and things.

Ultimately, it comes down to setting the appropriate expectations with the people in my life. Yes, gift-giving is a common practice in our society. Yes, many people, friends, coworkers, family expect us to hand out gifts on holidays. And yes, it is difficult to deviate from this inveterate tradition, especially in today’s consumer-driven, heavily mediated world in which our adequacy is constantly questioned. I made my intentions and expectations known to friends and family and explained why I am making the decisions I make. The people who love me support the choices I make, whether that’s choosing not to participate in gift-giving, or gifting alternatively and creatively.

Love and to be loved is what everybody really wants.

“I love you – see, here is this expensive shiny necklace I bought you”– someone I thought I knew.

Do you want to know a secret? It is support, not gift-giving, that is the hallmark of love. As soon as Christmas is over, Valentine’s Day is around the corner and stores are filled with love things and hearts. Gift-giving is not a love-languages. The idea that we can commodify love is nauseating. Sometimes I get the feeling that people give gifts to show their love because they are troubled by real love. Buying diamonds is not evidence of everlasting devotion, commitment or trust. Love is not a transaction; love is transcendent.

“Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. To love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.” – Jonathan Franzen

Obligatory gift-giving isn’t surrendering yourself to someone; it’s surrendering to consumerism and the status quo. Again, this doesn’t mean there’s something necessarily wrong with buying a gift for someone. But we should not fool ourselves by associating that gift with true love. Love doesn’t work that way. Instead of thinking of love as some sort of abstruse emotion, I think of it as an action verb (language nerd). If I want to show my love for others, I must do so with my actions. Creating great experiences for the most important people in my life by gifting experiences instead of stuff is a great place to start.

When I first learned how to write, I constantly asked my teacher to show me how to write new words, sentences, whole paragraphs. I always carried a piece of paper, notebook or journal to write things down. I do so to this day. I always love(d) to write letters. By age seven, I was the nerd when it came to spelling (math was never my thing though; my brother would want me to add this). English, German, language, linguistics were the subjects I was really good at and took pride in this fact. The borderline obsession with writing continued through high school. I notoriously wrote in my diary, was involved with the school newspaper and journalism. I simply loved writing because it helped me connect with people around me, but also to myself and to emotions I couldn’t express any other way.

At college, I did really well on anything that required creative writing or presentations. I was the editor of group assignments and my peers often came to me to review their stuff. Why am I telling you all this? Because I am very analytical and can zero in on details. I am also telling you this because I have a lot of evidence that I have always been creative and live(d) a creative life – personally and professionally. When I go too long without creating something I feel completely off, depleted and itchy.

I believe and teach my son that, as humans, we are all creators. We are the creation and the creators. It is our natural state. What we create is specific to the person but we are all meant to be creating new things. A problem I feel a lot is that our modern life caters to consumption. We constantly watch, listen to, read, and are bombarded with new information. Visual or otherwise. Aren’t we almost always in consumption mode? Something needs to balance out.

I practice Yoga for many years and love to connect to my body this way. In Yoga, balance is called prana (life force energy) which connects with the apana (regulates the outward flow of prana). This yogic concept has taught me a lot about the importance of becoming aware of how much we consume. Not just information on a daily basis but also energies. By becoming aware and taking notice of how much I take in throughout the day and how much I clear out, I started to feel more balanced.

These days, I have a lot of time to blog and read but I know (very soon) there will be a time when this will change. However, I know that I won’t fall into the false narrative that I don’t have time to write. To sit and write, not for work and money, just for me is important because it balances me. Sometimes it is easier said than done but when times get rough, I do not forget to tap into the things that provide me with sustained energy and joy. I don’t fall into the trap to believe that we are being sold an idea of where our energy should come from and what it looks like to recharge.

Social media tells us what to do: watch TV, consume more, work more to purchase more and so on. The message is so strong that we tend to forget that we actually don’t get energy from watching TV, from working more or accumulating more stuff. The older I get, the more I learn how my body works and what is good and healthy for me. I get energy from creating. I get it from spending quality time with people and nurturing relationships. I get energy from moving my body. I get energy from learning new things. I get energy from being in nature. Nature is the ultimate creation and it teaches me how to accept our gifts and embrace what I do. Do you think nature questions its creativity? It is the creation.

Our creative capacity as a human species is limitless. Part of me believes if we all put our creative minds together, we could solve many of the world’s problems. We need to release our conditional beliefs that we are limited, that we aren’t creative and shift it to that we are capable of so much more. That we are able to do anything we want.