Sense of Direction

I have always had a very uncanny sense of direction. It is a gift and a treasure that is a part of the essence of who I am.

"Sense of direction" is the ability to know one's location and perform wayfinding. It is related to cognitive maps, spatial awareness, and spatial cognition

When I was just a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years of age, my mother took us on a trip to visit my Aunt (her cousin) in New York City, New Jersey to be exact. One day after feeling cooped up in the house my mother decided to take me and my little sister for a walk. We walked around the streets until we were feeling tired and then my mother verbally told us that we were done and that we would head back now. We walked for a while until I noticed that we had passed the same corner with the shop with the pretty clothes in the window twice. I grabbed my mothers coat and tugged at it and said “mom you are going in the wrong way” she shrugged me off like I was just a little kid who had never traveled anywhere and didn’t have the faintest idea about what I was talking about. So, after we went around the same street with the same markers that I had noticed the first two times we had passed them, I saw my mother become frustrated and go into a shop and say something to the lady at the counter and then come out looking even more worried. I would learn later that my mother didn’t know the address of where my aunt lived. By this time my little sister who was only 4 at the time was complaining that she was tired and I saw my mother get even more frustrated. I was a brave little girl and I took a hold of my mothers’ hand and told her to “come on I know the way home”. Sure, enough I used my little girl memory and within 15 minutes I had followed the photographic pictures that I had stored in my mind and we were home at my aunt’s house. It was brave of my mother to listen to me, but I feel she had no choice but to trust me. She shared this story often to explain to people how special she thought I was.

I would rely on this “special” gift many times through out my life and it would direct me back to places, people and things.

Once when we were on a visit to Israel with a group of worship dancers. We were heading back to the apartment that we had rented and we accidentally got on the wrong bus to go home. When we got off the bus to try to find our way, I recognized a bush type of tree that we had walked by earlier that Sabbath" morning and I instantly knew the way to get us back home.   One woman that we had rented the apartment with said to me that she felt it was in the other direction. She had been to Israel many times before and stayed at this apartment, but I knew she was incorrect. We had a standoff and I decided that I was confident about where we were to go and it was late at night and I didn’t want to get lost in the dark. This posed a problem for the other ladies as they had to choose which one of us to follow. Personally, I think it made no sense to follow after me but I was confident and my sense of direction was something that if you had known me for any amount of time, even though it seemed illogical, you would trust my pattern. All the ladies decided to go with me and the one woman walked in the opposite direction. As we walked the streets of Jerusalem I pointed out in the dark, to the other women land marks that we had passed earlier on that morning on our walk into the old city. The women couldn’t remember but they trusted me very similarly in the way that my mother had that chilly day in Jersey. As we rounded that last street and they saw the lights of the apartment building I could tell that they were stunned that I knew the way and that the other woman was in fact lost. We were right about going in this direction but we made one crucial mistake. The other woman had the key to the apartment so we had to wait outside in the dark for another 2 hours till she found her way back home that evening. Lesson learned.

On that same trip it was our final days in Israel and we on our second visit back to the wailing wall. We had one more gate to visit and had been unable to locate it and we decided to go back to Sukkot Hallel a 24- hour worship place located on Mt Zion. Again, I told the ladies the way I thought we should go to get there as we were walking, they felt that it was in another direction. We came to an impasse where we discussed that we would just go over the hill and see from a higher place where we were and then decide what to do from there. As we came to the top of the hill, right there to our right was the last gate that we had trouble finding and over the other side was the 24- hour place of worship we were trying to get to. Again, my sense of direction was right and we were right where we needed to be. The ladies asked me how did I know this was where we were supposed to go and to be truthful, I did not have a logical solution, I just knew.

I have used this gift in so many amazing situations. When I think back about it, I realize that I have come to rely on this amazing uncanny sense of direction in every area of my life.