When Sense is Nonsense
I have always had a great sense of direction. I never knew how, or why I had it, but if you asked me at any given time where something was, I could point in the right direction. I wouldn’t necessarily know north or south or street names, just…”that way.” It’s definitely come in handy, every time I move, I need to learn streets and directions all over again, which means lots of getting lost trying to find my way around. I like going on instinct, it’s a great way to explore an area, and as long as I know “I need to be over there” I’ll end up at the right place.
That is, until I moved to San Francisco. I had a feeling this city was going to throw off my sense of direction, but I had assumed that was because of the hills. I was right about the sense of direction thing, but so wrong about the reason.
As it turns out, the hills don’t make a difference, the height of a street does not effect my perception of its length. What did screw me up, though, was my apartment building. My building sits in on the corner of the street. I enter my building on one street, and my window looks out onto another perpendicular street. However, when walking around that corner, I am able to cut it slightly by walking under the building, essentially walking catty corner instead of straight to the corner and turning 90 degrees. Doing this means that while walking from point A (under my window) to point B (entrance to my building) instead of only turning once in complete 90 degrees at the corner I turn twice, 45 degrees or so each. This is evidently a HUGE thing to my sense of direction.
When I first moved here, I was positive that the two streets surrounding my building were parallel to each other. Three turns must mean there’s another street, right? Just…the street is only 2 feet long and is actually a way to walk around the corner. I figured out my mistake quickly enough, but knowing and feeling are two different things.
This is where it gets interesting for me. I have lived here for over a year. Logically, I know the two streets I live on run perpendicular to each other, but it makes no difference. My mind – my “sense of direction” still insists that the streets run parallel. Even last night, someone asked me for directions, and I had a horrible time trying to point them in the right direction. I had to remember that “this street goes that way,” and even then confused myself but good.
Clearly, a “sense of direction” is related to feelings and perception more than logical thought, and changing the way your “gut” thinks is not simple. Logic does not enter into a gut reaction, and directional ability seems to be exactly the same. This is probably the first time that I remember trying to actively un-learn something because my perception is all screwy as a result, and it’s extremely hard.
What does it say about the human mind? How much of what we do is perception or gut-based, and how much is logical? My struggle with directions here in SF would suggest that I act a lot more from instinct than I do from logic, even if I don’t know that I’m doing it. I find that fascinating.
I haven’t found a second example where my gut thinks something that my head knows is wrong, but I’m absolutely keeping my eye out. I want to understand more about how this works, it’s a really neat mental, well, bug, that I want to fix.
Has this ever happened to you? Did you fix the bug?
