Rambi, you did remarkably well at being serious <g>
It's hard to take issue with anything you say (sigh). I myself do put a lot of weight on gut instincts. One (of a very few) advantages of growing older is that you accumulate more and more life experience. I have come to many more forks in the road then I could possibly count. Looking back on these, I believe that my initial instinct scored much better than reasoned analysis insofar as what the better choice was. Take the stock market, for instance. In the good old days my gut told me there was something flaky and scary about the "new economy." But nearly all that I was reading and hearing, up to and including Greenspan, said that it was real. I didn't listen to my gut enough. :-(
I have found the same with relationships. First impressions are so unfair if they tend to be negative in some way. Yet, I think my first impressions turned out be the right ones in many more cases than otherwise. The world has grown so much more complicated that it is impossible to take in all the many sides of any issue, all the nuances , all the whites, blacks, and grays, all the competing viewpoints. We just don't have the capacity or the time to do it. I'm not saying one shouldn't try ... I'm just saying that the gut instinct is like an autopilot designed to help us survive a complex environment, and that we should always listen to what it says, and proceed with great caution when we choose to go against it.
JC |
