Ostomy Memories of Instinct

RECENTLY, I’VE POSTED ABOUT THE TOPIC OF CHOICE and the constantly recurring necessity of performing this task, a sometimes difficult but always daily activity.  ‘I’ll take this one, no, hold it, I’ll take that one… I think.”  Sometimes I believe that we over-complicate the matter, like screwing the olive jar cap on too tight.  Sometimes, in effect, we can over-intellectualize a problem and then it simply floods us into high water indecision.  But the truth is that some of our best decisions are made without thinking.  Over our lifetime, we have developed instincts, reactions to recognizable clues, and we have learned to have confidence in this intuitive process.  “Trust instinct to the end,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “even though you can give no reason.”  Here’s a very simple example:  if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you can presume that it’s a duck.  A fellow once entered my office for a job interview.  He was, you might say, gaudily bejeweled.  I immediately knew I’d be short-circuiting the interview.  The personality that his obvious love of gold revealed was not what I was looking for.  [He was in prison a couple of years later.]  Instinctive decision making can be a good thing if employed at the right time.  Hopefully, with age and experience, we learn how to recognize that ‘right time.’  And then, without hesitance, you can say:  I’ll take that one.  

As my grandfather always said... study long, study wrong. He had many such sayings and only now in my advanced years do I recognize his boundless wisdom.
Indecision and over planning, two of the greatest hindrances to progress, and a sign of weakness in a man.