Or is our thinking just ‘really fast’ so we don’t realize our super-computer brain is thinking something through very thoroughly when we just, right away, ‘have a feeling’.
Well, yes, I have a feeling about something.
I don’t mean, ‘having a feeling about something …’ as we discuss in conversation, but rather that moment in mid-sentence (one we read, one we are hearing face-to-face or over the phone, or one we are writing). My point, the point of this, is about that spontaneous moment in time where the feeling arrives, that light-bulb inside our skull goes on. A signal of significant illumination. Right there. Right then. Right on!
Seriously, does anyone say ‘right on’ anymore?
Readers of Gladwell’s Blink will say it’s a ‘blink moment’, readers of Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow will say it’s ‘all that’ … and I’m inclined to think we substitute.
We like people we don’t know yet. We dislike people we don’t understand yet. We have an appetite for or against a food, a point of view or someone’s politics without knowing even a sliver of it, without knowing anything much at all … yet.
We trust our gut. Malcolm and Danny would explain it, but would they feel it?
I feel it.
Not so much need for thinking.
There are way too many issues and subjects which deserve and sometimes command our time to be thinking – and we do. We think hard, work hard, analyze and conclude.
Feeling doesn’t work that way at all.
It’s a switch. Flip it on, and you get feeling. Every time. No thinking required …
Reader feedback:
NEW LEAF Wise words…they capture the essence of humanity. It all boils down to how we feel and the joy we get from making others feel the way we want to feel. Thank you, PW, Calgary, AB
Thanks for reading. I appreciate feedback, pro and con, and suggestions to help improve this column and this website are always welcomed - usually published the following day under COMMENTS RECEIVED.
