The Citizen, 2019-06-13, Page 5Other Views
Learning to trust your gut feelings
Every human is valuable Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Have you ever had one of those job
interviews where they ask you about
your greatest weakness? It’s a pretty
garbage question because either you’re honest
and feel bad about yourself or you come up
with some nonsense like “I work too hard,” or
“I prioritize work over other things in my life.”
It’s a no-win situation but, if I had to give an
honest answer, I’d have to say that I often put
too much trust in myself. Some people might
call that being overconfident, other people
may say I have a pathological need to be right.
Regardless, that is likely my greatest
professional weakness.
See, I’ve always thought that trusting my
gut, believing in myself was key to success,
but that needs to be tempered with a healthy
amount of self-doubt to make sure you’re not
making mistakes.
Unfortunately for my sense of self-doubt,
there are a lot of times that I’ve ignored my gut
feelings, only to discover later that I did so to
my folly.
Take a few months ago, for example, when
it came time to fill up the humidifier in my
daughter’s room.
I’ve often wondered why humidifiers
aren’t made a little easier to fill up. They’re
messy to use, that’s for sure. This day proved
to be no different. I walked in, pulled off the
water tank, set it down and went to grab a
towel to dry up some water that had dropped
on the chair in my daughter’s room.
Unbeknownst to me, Mary Jane wanted to
help me, so she grabbed the water tank and
yelled, “I’ll help Daddy.”
I looked back, saw her following me, and
thought, “That won’t end well.”
But then I convinced myself I was being
overly cautious and I shouldn’t worry so
much.
One tumble and $70 later for a new
humidifier, I had learned an expensive lesson
about trusting my gut.
I’ve always been good at first impressions,
and by that, I mean how I first feel about
someone is usually proven true; that’s not
always a blessing. Sometimes, no matter how
nice a person seems, you have to remain
objective. Other times, no matter how bad a
first impression is, you have to hope you’re
mistaken and give them the benefit of the
doubt.
Sometimes, however, you need to trust your
inner voice. There have been plenty of
examples where I saw something other people
didn’t, kept my observations to myself and
was frustrated when my inklings proved to be
true.
A few years back, for example, one of
my neighbours sold their house. They were
great folks and would be missed. I met the
new owners, a couple from Toronto who first
talked about putting up a privacy fence
between our properties (not to be confused
with my existing neighbour who wanted a
fence to keep his dog in, something I wholly
support).
I’m not against fences, or against privacy,
but to have it be one of the first things you
bring up with a new neighbour, well it didn’t
seem neighbourly. It rubbed me the wrong
way, but I ignored it.
Sure enough, after this couple had not
moved into the home and instead rented it out,
my gut was proven correct as there were many
problems with the neighbours that required an
eviction notice and the police to clean up the
mess they left behind.
Last week I was reminded of another
situation where I hadn’t exactly ignored my
gut feeling, but I certainly hadn’t acted on it,
which, in hindsight, might have been a
mistake.
Someone moved into the community around
half a dozen years ago (and forgive the
vagueness here, but the point here isn’t who
this person is or what they did, but how I
should’ve learned to trust my gut; bad gas
travels fast in a small town). When I first met
this person I felt like I needed to wash my
hands right after.
I vocalized this, at the time, by calling the
person a “snake oil salesman”, an old adage
that refers to someone who sells fraudulent
goods or is a fraudulent person.
Sure enough, this person proved me right,
not making good on their business promises
and eventually disappearing from the
community.
At the time, I may have been able to save
some people some money and suffering if I
hadn’t worried so much about being polite. In
the end, it was another lesson for me to trust
my gut.
Last week, I was talking to some folks about
this individual and how they were still plagued
by the disappearing act.
I felt guilty because I may have been able to
do something about their problem had I voiced
my concerns. In the end, however, it was a
learning experience.
Trust your gut and, if something feels off, let
people know. At worst, you might be proven
wrong.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2019. PAGE 5.
Would you rather...?
When I was a bit younger, my friends
and I used to play frequent games of
“Would You Rather?” People have
been doing this for years, but we always tried
to keep it rather down to earth.
When we played the game, we always tried
to establish a scenario in which both options
were very, very close to one another in terms
of how appealing (or not appealing) they were.
Take the girlfriend at the time of a friend of
ours, for example. We didn’t particularly like
spending time with her and the times we were
forced into it were usually pretty unpleasant.
So a would-you-rather scenario around that
time might have been, would you rather ride
50 kilometres on a tandem bike with our
friend’s girlfriend or slam your hand in a door?
There would often be all kinds of follow-up
questions. What kind of door is it? Who’s
doing the slamming? Is it a finger, or the whole
hand? On the other side, you might ask if
you’re in the front or the back of the tandem
bike? Is the route hilly? Can you have
headphones, or do you have to talk the whole
time? I’m not saying it was mature, but it
certainly helped pass the time as we played
video games together or enjoyed a few beers.
What I’m getting at with my childish games
from years gone by (ah, my 20s – things were
so much simpler back then) is that my friends
and I always tried to pose a scenario that made
the decision difficult.
We’ve all been hyperbolic before and told a
friend about the time you slipped on a patch of
ice and literally thought you were going to die
or heard from a friend that he’d rather get hit
by a bus than go to work the following day.
Sure, those statements make a point, but no
one actually thinks you almost met your maker
when you slipped on that ice. Or, if your friend
got hit by a bus before his next day of work
that you’d be happy because you knew that’s
what he not-so-secretly wanted.
You need to be realistic when you speak.
And, when you’re trying to prove a point, it’s
important not to go overboard, lest you be
dismissed for being a bit over the top.
Take Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Toby Barrett
and the hot water in which he finds himself
right now. In a Tweet, which has since been
deleted, Barrett equated the freedom realized
as a result of D-Day (the 75th anniversary of
which has just passed) to the freedom to
debate issues like selling beer in corner stores.
Barrett is one of Premier Doug Ford’s
MPPs, so he was clearly instructed to post
something about this issue. (Our own MPP
Lisa Thompson posed with someone from
Belgrave Variety to complete her assignment
from Master Doug.) Drawing a parallel
between defeating the Nazis and buying beer
at your local corner store is a bit much.
It’s easy to get swept up in an issue you care
about, but – back to Would You Rather? –
you need to make sure you’re framing your
issue in a way that doesn’t go too far.
When Huron East Council was inundated
with wind turbine opponents for several years,
those against the turbines tried everything to
get councillors to help them (it was a
provincial issue, so there’s nothing municipal
councillors could do). One year, around
Remembrance Day, one of the opponents
made a very similar comparison, saying that
soldiers hadn’t fought and died so our freedom
could be usurped by building wind turbines.
Like I said before, a bit much. Wind turbines
are one thing, while World Wars are another.
So, the next time you want to draw a line
between two issues, try to keep as little white
space in the middle of them as possible.
The world lost a special person last month
when Jean Vanier died May 7, at the age
of 90, in Geneva, Switzerland.
Vanier was the son of the late Major-
General George Vanier, who served as
Canada’s Governor General from 1959 to
1967, and his wife Pauline, but he became
more famous than his father. I first heard about
him when one of my daughters worked for a
university co-op term at Daybreak, the first
L’Arche community Vanier set up in Canada.
L’Arche communities are home to people with
developmental disabilities.
He was born in Switzerland where his
father was serving in Canada’s diplomatic
corps. Later the family managed to escape
Paris just before German forces invaded the
city. In 1945, when his father returned to that
liberated city as Canada’s ambassador to
France, Jean and his mother visited survivors
of the Nazi death camps, and seeing their
emaciated condition affected him for the rest of
his life.
Vanier was serving in the Canadian navy in
the early 1950s when he became dissatisfied
with his life. He resigned and went to France
where he studied and taught philosophy. In
1964, through his friendship with a priest
named Father Thomas Phillippe, he became
aware of thousands of people institutionalized
with developmental disabilities. He invited two
men from these institutions, Raphael Simi and
Phillippe Seux, to come and live with him in
Trosly-Breuil, France. From that experience,
he established the first L’Arche community in
Trosly-Breuil where people with disabilities
live with those who care for them. Today there
are L’Arche communities in 37 countries, a
governing philosophy being Vanier’s belief that
people with disabilities are teachers of those
who live with them rather than being burdens.
Despite the honours that were heaped on
him, including the Companion to the Order of
Canada, the French Legion of Honour and
many others, Jean Vanier continued to live
humbly in the original L’Arche community in
Trosly-Breuil, helping to feed, wash and care
for his disadvantaged co-residents until shortly
before his death. Those who met him recall
Vanier wearing well-worn clothes, even when
he was speaking at international conferences
where he would emphasize his belief that every
human being is precious and needs love, even
those neglected, overlooked and despised.
It’s that belief that has made me rethink
things. My career has been based on telling the
stories of people who have accomplished
interesting things. Politicians or farmers, artists
or entrepreneurs – they were of interest to my
readers because they had done extraordinary
things. They stood out from their neighbours,
family or friends. But here was Vanier
reminding us that all of God’s children (he was
religious) were of value, whether they
contributed to the betterment of the world or
were incapable of feeding and clothing
themselves.
His argument is a hard sell these days for
too many people. In Europe, governments are
being replaced because voters don’t think
they’ve done enough to keep out people who
are so desperate to escape war, poverty and
famine in Africa that they’ll crowd onto leaky
boats and risk their lives crossing the
Mediterranean Sea. To our south, many
Americans think their leader is making their
country great again by building a wall to keep
out desperate people who have walked
hundreds of miles from their Central and South
American homes seeking a better life. Here in
Canada, a relatively small problem of people
walking across our borders uninvited to claim
refugee status has become a disproportionately
important political issue.
The report of the National Inquiry into
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and
Girls was delivered to the federal government
last week. One of the reasons the inquiry was
necessary was because police didn’t take the
disappearance of Indigenous women as
seriously as they would have if the women
were white and middle class. They’d become
jaded by seeing these people as “druggies” or
alcoholics or prostitutes, not as people of
value.
Perhaps I’m newly accepting of Vanier’s
belief that all humans are important just for
being human because I’m a senior citizen now.
The very old and the very young often don’t
contribute great things to the world. Children at
least are abided and celebrated because they
have the potential to do much more. Seniors
have made their contributions in the past and
can be seen as a problem now because they
drive up medical costs and live on pensions
supported by younger taxpayers. They’re a
problem that will only get bigger – until they
die and the government and their younger
family members get to split the proceeds of the
estates they’ve created over a lifetime.
On top of all the other things Jean Vanier
did, the simple message that we all have value
is perhaps the most far-reaching.
Keith
Roulston
From the
cluttered desk
The secret of getting ahead is getting
started. – Mark Twain
Final Thought