I awoke at 5:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning to a bright burst of light and an enormous KABOOM! arriving almost simultaneously. I jumped from a sound sleep to my office in a single bound, determined to turn off my computer before any damage from the storm could occur.
Climbing back into bed, heart still pounding like a jackhammer on steroids, instead of returning to much-needed sleep, I began to reflect on a similar storm that brewed in Italy 2056 years ago.
Yes, I realize I’m a little “different.” (Thanks for noticing.) In the middle of an early-morning March thunderstorm, not everyone’s mind would immediately turn to the last moments of Julius Caesar’s life.
Warned by his wife not to attend the Senate that day, warned by a seer that he would be harmed not later than the Ides (meaning middle) of March, the guy listened only to his own determined ego, and went willingly to the site of his demise.
Which leads me now to ponder the question: “How do you know when intuition, or a ‘gut feeling,’ is magically saying something you must sit up and pay attention to, and how do you know when it’s only your foolish imagination playing fearful tricks?” (I don’t have an answer to this—if I did, I’d make millions.)
“The Ides have come,” said Caesar to the seer on his way to the Senate. “Ay, Caesar; but not gone,” replied the seer.
That right there would have freaked me out enough to turn right around and head back for home to pull the covers over my head and wait for the next morning’s dawn.
Which is, of course, exactly what I did on Tuesday, and chose not to venture out all day. No sense tempting fate!