The gut feeling versus instinct debate rages on. After I published my last blog a friend sent me this.
It brought a new perspective to the argument with the idea of whether you trust the physical gut feeling or the psychological instinct. We can feel both but which do you trust?
Her example was when, newly divorced, she bumped into her first love at her lawyer’s office. Her instinct screamed RUN but the lurch in her stomach and the butterflies took her back to that first kiss outside the local pub. Yes, they are both older, and in his case wider, but he still had that smile that turned her legs to jelly. Even after she heard herself agreeing to go for a coffee, her instinct was pulling her trainers out her gym bag and whispering the words “that cow from karate he two timed you with” in her ears. But the butterflies were flapping faster than the flight wings of instinct so she passed on her number and the date was made.
The “date” was just coffee and she quickly remembered the feeling that she had dodged a bullet when she dumped him the first time. So her argument was that had her instinct been allowed to win, she wouldn’t have gone for coffee and may always have had that what if sense.
So many times we find ourselves in these “bumped into” situations where it is often easier to say yes than no. Our gut tells us that the “we must catch up sometime over a drink” is just a polite nod to former times but what the heck, however it can be that very past feeling that stirs things up and causes trouble.
I guess the warning signs are always there but so are those ever tempting danger signs. You know the ones, (I see heads nodding) the ones were you go f**k it, shave your legs and head out for dinner and a morning after you immediately regret but it becomes a damn good story. Balance the feeling against the instinct people, think safe, think will this completely destroy me, think can I be bothered, think I preferred him when that AC/DC tshirt fitted him!!!!
Me? Still undecided on which I follow but what I do know is that life is sometimes too short not to go f**k it! As long as there is gin, chocolate, weepy movies and mates to tell me there are plenty more fish, I will take the chance.
G x