Heart whispers

Heart whispers was a phrase, I suspect, used by Oprah Winfrey to describe that thing when a voice inside yourself tries to talk to you.  I cannot swear it was Oprah, but there was a television show I once watched in which a woman described driving home from Christmas shopping at the mall and accidentally striking a bicyclist, killing her and taking her away from her family just days before Christmas.  An inner voice had spoken to her softly, she claimed, before she reached that intersection.  It had asked her not to take the usual way home.  Go a different way, it said.  She ignored it, brushed it aside, and then regretted not listening to that inner voice forever.  Heart whispers, said the host of the show confidently, (probably Oprah; it sounds like her, does it not?).  I always try to listen when my heart whispers.  I tried not to gag over that awhile.

The show was about how we can learn to listen to our instincts better, learn to trust those inner voices and let them lead us.  Because allegedly these inner voices, these heart whispers, can guide us away from car accidents and muggings and all manner of tragedy.

I was thinking about that show when I drove to the barn this afternoon to pick up J from her riding lesson.  My inner voice had encouraged me to take a different route, my heart had whispered if you will, and I had listened, and therefore I was lost.  I was lost in a field of cranberries and although I could see the barn in the distance, there was no discernable path that would take me there.  Listening to my inner voice is not the problem for me.  

The idea of needing to work on listening better to the impulsive voice inside me that shouts (not whispers) out suggestions is absurd.  My inner voice talks incessently, offering me all sorts of ridiculous advice.  Today it got me lost in field of cranberries, and it has, in the past, been responsible for getting me lost in many different cities.  When my inner voice says, Hey let's go this way instead, I go without hestitation.  The helpful inner voice also encouraged me once to do an inappropriate impersonation during a job interview, and frequently asks me to put things in my mouth that do not belong there.  It tells me to jump off bridges and cliffs, it tells me to jump out of boats into the sea, and it tells me yes yes yes.  I have never known it to keep me safe from car accidents (though how would I know?) ; rather it seems to propel me toward self-destruction.  My task is not to listen more closely to my heart, but to ignore it when it gets too rowdy.

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