Do you trust your instincts?
I always try to embed a joke, hidden meaning, or odd allusion when I coin my post titles. Get it—“coin”?
To address this prompt, I have to first define instincts for a human. Are they some sort of manifestation of extra-sensory perception? (That’s “spidey sense” for you Marvel fans.) Or are they rather some finely tuned sense of awareness and surroundings that some people’s brains can process and react to?
I’ve often asserted that I believe in metaphysics. I think there are too many things that science can’t explain. Oh, sure, you can say the brain runs on electrical and chemical reactions and that, when those cease, the person is dead. But is there an Electro-Chemical Soul that continues after the death of the body? In which case, the person/the mind lives on.
So maybe instincts are a combination of the two things I cited above. This might include deja vu, when you feel like you’ve experienced this moment before, which could be the mind perceiving a piece of all time existing at the same time. (See my post, “Oh, Quantum Me!” for more on this.) It might include a sixth sense, when you perceive things beyond the normal sensory realm.
Of course, skeptics would say that life experience, training, and awareness could also be the cause of instincts. People often complimented my late wife about her luck, because bad things would happen to her (being denied tenure, getting fired) and then she’d wind up landing on her feet in another job. [I was going to say “position” but that seemed an odd noun in that sentence, and made me think of a superhero landing.) Was it luck, or was it putting past experiences to good use in finding a new direction? She thought it the latter.
In other words, we make our own luck—outside of casinos; there, the house makes it for us. But, to return to the prompt, as far as trusting my instincts when they tell me something? I’d say about 50% of the time. Not a good track record. I guess I’m betting on karma and to even everything out.
I guess I’ll find out in my next life!
MUSOFYR 