I had a fascinating and heart-wrenching call from an art world acquaintance and new friend last night – we talked about, among other things, intuition.

Intuition is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the power or faculty of attaining direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” Wikipedia’s excellent article on intuition talks about empirical data, the sixth sense, and women’s intuition.

What my friend and I discussed is how, through seemingly random acts, worlds can collide and people can change. For example, I can pick a random day to send a fairly unusual article on jewelry which is merely intriguing and thought-provoking to me, but which is absolutely shattering, life altering, and timely to her. Or, she can mention a fairly minor anecdote in a class conversation that she typically wouldn’t choose to share, that has a huge impact on me and choices I make about priorities in career, family and art.

I don’t believe that, with God at the helm, events like this are merely coincidence. Serendipity, definitely! As she encouraged me last night – intuition, the ability to reach unexplainable decisions or decide to perform random acts that end up very right in the long run – is a gift that we all need to be open to, listen to, develop.

I’m very thankful she reached out and called me, and I’m still reeling in amazement at the mysterious way the universe works.