The Tug
Ever feel a nudge?
A tug on your arm?
As if a kid is trying to get your attention?
Hey, you! Mom, Dad! Over here!
A tug is a sense that something or someone is trying to get you to take notice. It may come in the form of an actual nudge from a friend. A gut feeling. A brief idea. A tiny ache in your mind, or heart.
Tugs come to us frequently, but we don’t always pay attention to them.
You may feel a tug when leaving a job—that quiet pang about those you are leaving behind. You're completely ready for what's next, and you're aligned with your choice to leave. But only 98 percent of you is on board. Two percent longs to stay.
It could be that tug in your heart remembering that your child is leaving for college in a few weeks. You know that their journey is to leave home and become more independent—and yet part of you still wishes they would stay.
These are some significant tugs.
But sometimes tugs in life are smaller. Less significant. But worth listening to just the same.
I had one the other day. A friend was telling me about the book Lessons in Chemistry. She told me it was worth reading and even texted me a picture of the cover.
When I got home?
The book was sitting on my bedside table. Another friend had actually given it to me a month or two before.
I hadn’t read it—I didn’t even remember that it was sitting there, and what it was called. But I recognized the cover.
A few days later, I was at my town library—talking to the librarian about how the app Libby works. She said, “Say, for example, you want to read Lessons in Chemistry. It might take a month or two to receive it.”
Ha!
Third time’s a charm.
I thought, “Okay, universe, I will read this book!”
That, my friends, is a tug.
Neuroscientist and psychiatrist Arnold Mendell calls these tugs a quantum flirt. A quantum flirt is “a short-lived, transient, perpetual signal which can be used to provide us with insight.”
Don’t you love this notion? That the universe actually flirts with us?
Mindell says these tugs are like a flash of light. Brief, momentary, almost daring us to not pay attention. But a tug wants you to listen and see it just the same.
These quantum flirts may come in the form of a nagging worry. A hot spot in your energy. A nudge in your stomach.
What is trying to get your attention in this way?
Do you have a gut feeling that someone is not telling you the truth? A sense that you need to change your career path? An instinct that there is something else for you somewhere else in the world?
The human brain can apparently process about 11 million bits of information per second. But our conscious mind can only attend to about 40 or 50 bits per second. So our mind is always choosing what to pay attention to. And a nudge or tug is one of those miniscule bits.
A tug can be quiet. It can arrive with almost undistinguishable footsteps. It’s there—and then flash!—it’s gone.
But the tug often comes back—and repeats itself over and over again—like a lighthouse beacon trying to get our attention.
The quiet nudge makes it that much more important to see and hear them when they show up.
One of my favorite poets of all time, Mary Oliver, said, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
Watch out for that female cardinal that keeps coming to your feeder. To that thought of a friend you haven't talked to in a while. To that flash of insight that shows up, and then dissipates.
Listen to that sense that seems to be coming from other worlds, or from dream time. It is bringing wisdom that is designed just for you.
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