Left, Right, Centered

By Pamelagrace Beatty

Serious Neck Crick

As I walked down the streets of New York City and gazed up, up, up at the skyscrapers. They were so tall, looking at them made my neck hurt. I was in awe. Freshly from Seattle, and long before Seattle’s downtown could boast of being a town of skyscrapers, I could not get over how tall NYC’s buildings were. When I was growing up, the tallest building in Seattle was the Smith Tower. In fact, with its 38 floors and 484 feet, it was the tallest structure on the west coast until 1961 when the Seattle Space Needle surpassed it. Now there are 20 office buildings that are taller than Smith Tower. But back then, in New York as a new flight attendant, I only had eyes for all those skyscrapers reaching into the blue.

At this point you might be wondering, “What has this to do with the title of this blog?” The connection is that it was living in New York that made me “right brain” dependent. Once I found myself in the city that never sleeps, I realized I was not even remotely prepared to deal with. I believe it was obvious that I was not from there. Yes, walking around looking up at the tall buildings was a bit of a hint, as well as the way I dressed and my non-New York accent. I also think there may have been a stamp on my forehead that said, “Be kind to her folks, she truly has no clue!” It hit me fast that I was out of my league. The people talked fast, moved fast and didn’t like questions from strangers. Also, New York didn’t put mayonnaise on their hamburgers (which gave me away as a non-native too).

Got My Back

My mother had run interference for me growing up. She managed to protect me from getting into the “bad crowds” and took on nasty adults who would have done me harm or would have limited my opportunities and potential. (The details of all that could be another blog.) In short time I realized I was now on my own. Since I knew nothing about how to deal in a big city with serious diverse cultures and neighborhoods as well as underground transit and boroughs, I had no choice but to rely on the information I gleaned from my intuition.

Using my intuition wasn’t new to me but I had never had to rely on it before. It was one of those things that popped up and I could use it or not. It was a way of knowing things when I didn’t know them. It usually manifested as a kind of feeling about someone or a situation. For example, I had a summer job in a community center for youth. After I worked there a while a person was hired to put on plays using the neighborhood teenagers. When I met this person, I had a bad feeling about them. It was abstract, I couldn’t say what the feeling was based on. I just didn’t feel the new play director was a good person. Turned out they weren’t. After one teenager went home in hysterics about how they were being treated, the play director was investigated and fired. I mentioned this feeling to my mother who thought I had an overactive imagine. I frequently got that response when I had these “feelings” with no data to back them up. Regardless of lack of information, I learned to trust those feelings and be on guard.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Back to New York. This was my first time living alone, and I chose a city that was a different from Seattle as night and day. Not good. I also had no friends and being a new flight attendant with an “on call” schedule didn’t help. I never knew when I would be called to take a flight. I was expected to be able to get to the airport within an hour from crew scheduling’s call. I had two roommates who were also new and on call. We were seldom home at the same time. As a result, when I did have time when I could get out of the apartment, I usually did it by myself. And since I knew nothing about NYC, I explored. Exploring proved not to be the best idea and that’s where my intuition came in.

I depended entirely on intuitive guidance. When I saw someone during my travels on the subway or was greeted (use that term loosely) by a stranger, I checked within to see if I should smile and say “Hello” or run like hell. There was an in-between response…give them the old stink eye which translated to “Do you really want to mess with me?” This last one proved to be very helpful when meeting drug addicts, pimps and other possibly bad actors who mistook my somewhat innocent looks as an invitation to take some kind of advantage of me.

I lived in New York for a year and then transferred to Kansas City as a flight attendant trainer. Things were deafeningly quieter there. It was the Midwest. The city was rather predictable until it wasn’t but that too is another blog). I had little need for my intuition and that was fine with me.

Now, fast forward to moving to San Francisco. I transferred back to being a flight attendant again, and like in New York, I didn’t know a soul there and for some reason I felt a need to use my intuition to answer questions or tell me what to do next. I would ask a question and wait for the answer to come to me. Nothing. Nada. Zip! “What?!” I thought. “Where is my intuition?” It was not responding. I was going to have to figure the situation out for myself. Rats! I didn’t want to figure it out for myself…that’s why I was asking my intuition! But all was silent on the internal front. That is when I learned that the left side of my brain could be useful.

Left versus Right

The left side of the brain is said to be the logical side. It is adept at working with math, logic, language, critical thinking and complex problem solving. The right side of the brain is said to be more creative, imaginative, intuitive (!) and good at recognizing faces as well as the seat of emotional intelligence. Lots of research has been done on how the two sides of the brain work. Most researchers agree there are two sides and they do work differently. You will notice that the intuition is said to be in the right side of the brain. So, when my intuition shut down on me, I had to logic things out. That takes way more time than just reaching in and “knowing”.

Needless to say I was disappointed and frustrated. I was used to having and inner GPS. Now I had to use my head. Fortunately, I got used to that. The amazing thing was that after a while, I found I could actually use both sides of my brain. They could work together! What a concept! My most graphic example of that was when I designed workshops for the employees in a corporation I worked for. I would create the training according to what the client wanted and how I was taught to write up workshops. Then I would step back and test what I had done with my intuition. I would take a look at the work and “feel into it”. Then I would make the changes that came to me. Working in tandem with both sides of my brain proved to be very effective. As a result, I now respect my left side of my brain and lean easily into it. So, the lesson is, we got two sides for a reason! Use them. Smile.