FOWC with Fandango — Instinct
Without getting all Leroy Jethro Gibbs here … is there any other way to make a decision when you have no hard facts with which to work? It sounds right, doesn’t it?
Except when Gibbs does it, the entire agency agrees. When I do it, no one ever agrees.
If you’re a mother and you know your kid is “off,” you take him or her to the doctor. You don’t wait until the strep throat or whatever it shows up with full symptoms. The doctor promptly tells you he can’t see any problem. You go home. The kid is a mess the next day.
Let’s hear it for instinct!
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You hear a noise in your car’s engine. A funny little squeaky noise which comes and goes. Do you wait for the serpentine belt to snap or take it to a mechanic? You take it in. They look. They shrug.A few days later, the transmission falls out. Instinct! Gotta love it.The meteorologists on the television are predicting a few inches of snow, but your bones are screaming “it’s a big one on the way.”
Do you ignore your instinct and believe the guy on TV? Or lay in some supplies, fill the car with gasoline, and bring the candles out … just in case. I mean, what the hell. A few extra items in the house won’t hurt, right?If I have data to work with (better yet, if I had Data to work with), I’ll work with it or him. But through most of real life, we have no facts. We have instinct, experience, “gut feelings.” Plus, we have a sort of prescience that comes with years of making judgment calls, dealing with emergencies … a kind of “know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em” sort of thing.
Unfortunately, the doctors, mechanics, bosses, friends, colleagues et al? They don’t share that with uw. They merely think we are a bit strange. Remarkably, no matter how many times we are proved right? They still won’t believe us.
The next time you just know what’s going to happen? Everyone will completely ignore you. Totally.
So, when you get that deep, gut feeling, the one which tells you a catastrophe is on the way? Run around. Tell everyone. They will ignore you. BUT later — you can enjoy the rare opportunity to tell everyone: “SEE? I TOLD YOU SO!” and they will say, “Yeah, yeah. Right. Uh huh.”Most major decisions in my life have been gut decisions and they usually turned out better than the “rational” ones based on whatever evidence I had. Instinct on the hoof.
I think it’s how we contact the basic, hard-wired knowledge in our brains.
If only someone would occasionally agree with us.
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Categories: #FOWC, Daily Prompt, Fandango's One Word Challenge, Humor, Marilyn Armstrong, truth, You can't make this stuff up
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Well I agree with you. I think instinct is something that humans rely far too little on in these modern times…to our mutual chagrin. And it’s knowing when one is feeling something that’s going to prove out versus feeling the effects of that sketchy and ill considered chili dog one may have scarfed for lunch. The LDS folks have a word for that feeling “prompting’ and we’re always been taught how to discern the prompting from the internal combustion. Many times it’s much easier to ignore that little voice or put it off on the chili dog, but for myself? If I don’t LISTEN and the same message keeps popping up on my personal radar, I’ll regret it. Sooner or later. And sometimes a person just knows. That’s called ‘experience.’
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For me, it’s a matter of WHAT is involved. When there’s money begin exchanged, I need facts, figures, and I have learned the hard way how expensive trust can turn out to be. But where relationships are concerned, I don’t know how else you develop them. You feel what you feel.
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My gut told me to be anxious about the election result even though the pollsters were all predicting a Labor victory. I thought they might just scrape by at best. The result was worse than even I imagined. I’m afraid we’re no better than you. People would rather have a man in a baseball cap who waves his arms a lot than a party with actual policies.
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I am lost amidst the massive international stupidity. I don’t get it. I never got it and I don’t know how you battle this kind of thing. At a certain point, it really IS out of your hands.
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Agree. I nowadays GO with my gut feeling. Shouldn’t have bought the house we bought either. I felt it; wrong, wrong, wrong. The sellers were terrible liars but we were in love with the old house…. Pay for it ever since!
I often (really) phone near-to-my-heart people out on a whim, it seems. Turns out they absolutely needed me to phone at that very moment. Scary – and gratifying.
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I bought a house like that too. THIS one, in fact. We knew it needed work, but we didn’t know half of it. Talk about liars, too.
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They are sadly everywhere! This is our 3rd house, one in England, the second in Switzerland and we thought, with this one we had seen it all…. Turned out we hadn’t encountered any thieves, liars and downright horrible pretenders before.
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My gut feelings are usually right too, especially about people. I just need to learn to listen to them more…:-)
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Got to go with your gut feelings.
Leslie
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I have that same feeling. The USA is not ready yet for a woman president, and the Democrats are scurrying about like lemmings ready to bolt for the cliff. Where are their steady, intelligent, ready-to-tale-on – Trump candidates? We need someone who can beat him at his own game.
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We do, but I’m not seeing it. I hope they put their act together VERY SOON PLEASE. But there’s only so much we can do. The irony is that we do have the votes. What we DON’T have is organization.
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My gut is telling me that Donald Trump will somehow prevail, the Dems will fold like origami, and America is screwed. I hope like hell my gut is wrong.
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A lot of foreigners think that, too. I’m hoping we get our act together, but the Democrats are all over the place. We have a lot of wannabees, but it’s mostly rabble. I’m not sure we have a strong enough candidate. I think Warren could and should do it, but I don’t think we are going to let her. She is personally SUCH a pistol and SOOOOO smart.
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I agree. I’d like to see her get the nomination, but I’m afraid too many see her as another Hillary.
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And that’s a pity because they are total personality opposites. Warren is total energy and really fast on her verbal feet. She’s very like my best friend but in a lot better health. She has been an OUTSTANDING senator here. Really brilliant.
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I love the bravado/grit of “going with your gut”. It’s part of the Leroy Jethro Gibbs character. But (if memory serves me well here), I never went on TV with a news report, based on my gut. Not in the real world. You need hard evidence and reliable sources to corroborate your “intel”.
Gut instinct was never part of “Journalism 101”. We often used it to go, step by step, in chasing the story. Sometimes, gut helped you find a perp on the run or an elusive piece of evidence – but gut never was the end-all gavel the story closed device.
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Your gut may get you TO the story, but facts make the story relevant to others. Obviously, there’s a time and place for one and the other, often both.
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Your gut probably got you TO the story, but after that, your brain too the lead.
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I agree. 😇
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Of course, I’m not talking about the kind of decision which really requires facts — like buying a house, for example. More like emotional decisions or decision where emotions are an important part of the process.
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I know. I agree that at times our instincts guide us better
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