As we move through lives, we tend to do somethings in a cycle. Our brain senses the “right pattern” to reach a desired outcome. As we do the same activity again and again, this pattern recognition is relegated to the subconscious. One day, when things are not exactly checking the right boxes, may be very minimally off, we decide to act. This is, I believe, instinct. The look of my child one random morning, even though everything is fine. The weird soft noise in the kitchen. The look of a patient even though the charts are fine.
So this pattern recognition comes with the brain making a large cohort of observations on specific parameters over a long, long period of time. Therein lies the value of experience. The stereotypes of the young rook and the old hand.
The weight of instinct is immense. Sometimes you are asking intelligent far more experienced men and women to act and intervene based on your instinct that things are awry. More often than not you will be shut down. The lives we live our sanitised grids with fixed data entries. Arbitrary concepts like instinct and empathy just don’t land.
Sometimes the cold calculated prognostications chill your bone, especially when contrasted against the warm mess of human emotions. This is a very precarious tread for me . The weight is, indeed, immense.
I want to hone instinct. I want to be observant. I love to observe deflections, the changes in body language.
This is my only shot on this beautiful planet and I want to see and reflect on nature and its creations. Thankfully, I have a job that allows me to observe that most eloquent of species, Humans.
One day, perhaps, I’ll also get to meet the lizards, turtles and finches of Galapagos.
Quis hic locus, Quae regio, quae mundi plaga.
