Fragments of Ricocheting Thoughts

Continuing a tradition of publicly owning my ignorance, I am confessing that I read this interview of Emmet Gowin, and did not get it.  And perhaps it is appropriate that I don’t get it, because throughout the interview Gowin returns again and again to the value of embracing uncertainty.  

“So we can’t possibly know what it is we really need… and still there can be a good sense to what all our drives and needs are expressing.”

So there’s a sense to our desires and expression, even when the logic cannot be laid out? Am I getting this correctly?

“It’s so essential, so necessary.  It’s so appropriate to be confused, to be muddled, to be unsure. … But it is the aliveness of the unguarded intuition and the persistence of our own feelings that guide us to our discoveries.”

I love it.  I think it is a immensely romantic idea - that if we only followed our intuition, it will not lead us astray.  I want it to be true.  But fear, in the guise of a statistician, always pipes up.

What if this is selection bias?

We hear of the successes of those who followed their dreams, trusted their gut, and made it big.  But we hear about them not necessarily because they followed their dream - we hear about them because they made it big.  It’s the Japanese story about the fishermen guardian’s temple, where they hung pictures of survivors of great storms who were blessed at the temple.

“See? They survived that legendary storm because their were blessed here.”

“What about all those fishermen who were blessed here and drowned? How many of those are there?”

How does one just follow your intuition?

I know, this is very cynical.  I can feel it - I know it is fear hiding behind the statistician’s mask.  Nonetheless I can’t shake its logic.  But I can’t dismiss the feeling that Gowin is saying something important too.  So I am stuck in this strange place where I feel something is important, but cannot quite justify it.

Silly as this sounds, please please help me with this.  Tell me why (and perhaps when) you trust your intuition?