We have bodily, instinctual trust which, at an initial thought, escapes rationality. A moment ago, I felt this way, right where my abdomen meets my sternum, and now here I sit, hunched over and feeling the urge to write about something unfathomed move toward my lower back. Where does this originate, if not from the very place rationality does? Perhaps it is merely more inconspicuous. By sheer consequence, however, it must be so that intuitiveness is based on rationality which has been hashed out subconsciously.
From this point onward, I will be dissecting this argument to its most precise atom. For it is no more significant to say that we experience intuition than it is to say that such things simply are unreal, so the subject can be breached only by some logical basis.
Therefore, if we are to compare things that are somewhat explicable in the body to things that are less so, as is necessary because an intuition is inexplicable yet sensorial, then the mind and the soul are interacting in following sequence: the soul has an inexplicable need, it informs the mind of this, the mind is convinced by an intense sentiment and provides an inconspicuous sense of logic, and the body is told by the mind to feel an intuition. In any case, an intuition, here, means a feeling toward something definite, which also should allude to a truth about intuitions themselves. If intuition deals with definite things, then they share an equivalent dimension—ergo intuition is, itself, definite.
I also am inclined to believe in the definitive nature of an intuition—which is to say, its realness—due to the logic inherent to the mind’s acceptance of something once inexplicable from the soul. And though we cannot at first perceive how the mind has made sense of the initial need to express the soul, we have to assume that the logic is present somewhere, and this is what I am clinging onto.
Distinctly, something remotely intuitive seems to be anything to do with an intuition regarding one’s personal interaction with something or someone else. Take, for instance, a scenario in which I feel compelled to tell a child, who is highly allergic to peanuts, not to eat a piece of fried chicken. Now, the child questions me, frustrated. Why should they not eat it? Well, there could be some simple response, like informing the child with the allergy that the chicken was fried in peanut oil, and thus it would cause them, their loved ones, and myself as an observer, distress if they were to consume this piece of fried chicken. But I do not truly know for sure that such allergens are apparent here.
Perhaps, near the outskirts of my sole in this case, I have an intrinsic need for the child not to consume the chicken; perhaps the soul can possess wisdom that the mind, and later the body, cannot comprehend. Such is the point I aim to convey. An intuition is informative of one’s own feelings toward a situation, certainly, but it is also not always solely a personal phenomenon. In the example of the child, whatever would be prompting me to feel hesitant toward them eating the piece of fried chicken is trustworthy both to my mind and body, though it appears inexplicable. It comes from an intuition, and one that is not so personal as it is remote.
There exists a third segment within this area—trust of absence. In 1960, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his “String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110.” The piece seems sure of how unsure it really is. The final measures of the first movement are left uncomfortably unresolved, much like Shostakovich’s reluctant support of the Soviet Union and the political contention with which he was grappling at the time of writing this piece. Should he have ended his life, his dismay, then this piece of music would have represented a type of drama that few can commit to. However, he presents no conclusion, just absence. The piece ends abruptly, and though there is nothing left to be heard, it still is evoking a specific feeling about the silence it leaves the audience with.
When one is dying from the inside out, it is unreasonable to assume that they could produce something out of their deterioration. Curiosity eventually leads one to a willingness to assert when they are right, but it seems irrational to think that we are capable of a comprehensive curiosity of death. I worry that curiosity will inevitably be cut short, but before any of us expire, perhaps all we can want is to discover what we have discovered. So, tell me from the onset what I know, and what I do not know, and I must decide that this is unreliable. Otherwise, what else is there to trust? Such would be putting intuition forever to rest, when it is uncalled for even by the seemingly complete absence of anything substantive.
I am outlining yet another particular intuition. If it is true that I will lack time, placing myself in total absence, like Shostakovich’s Op. 110 suggests, where does a solution—or a conviction—lie? I do not have an intuition on my expectations. They simply are. I do not know their nature, but this seems unnecessary, regardless. I mean, by this, to assume that some confusions we have are the results of misunderstanding our intuition, rather than the content of something. I trust that I am smarter than I was yesterday, and further in love with things. But where is my intuition on the time I have left? It seems absent, precisely in the same way as a time past my life, or past the end of the first movement of Op. 110.
I must trust a lack of an intuition, as well, with no selfish indecision, which proposes here and now that my time has merely been, and always will be in contemplating such things. That is, until the point of realization that my soul knows more than I think it does, and an intuition must guide us continually.
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