Emotional Sandwiches

by Sarah Ashley Neal

  When we explored the Time Sandwich we suggested we could buy someone else’s time to do a job for us. You may have to work with contractors and you will trust them to provide a successful service or product. We would need to trust the person or we wouldn’t invest our money – we have to be confident that he/she could do the job. When you don’t trust yourself completely, it is OK to ask for help and this may be the resolution.

  I don’t believe we can partially trust ourselves. I do feel that if you are at the stages where you are ‘sitting on the fence’ then you are also at a stage which is inviting you to jump over and meet Trust head-on in full costume on the other side. Although, it is actually no less logical to trust in yourself to make a decision to turn back, as this could end up being the best course of action at the time. But is Trust greeted on the fence itself in order to make the decision or on either side once the decision is made? Actually, I am inclined to say, ‘on the fence’; this is because that is where the decision is being made and that is exactly the point where Trust is being asked to engage.

  On another note altogether, when someone beside you is itching to help and you say, “Go on then, you do it, I don’t trust myself”, maybe it is because they were watching you and made you feel nervous at the time. You didn’t demonstrate to Trust that you had enough confidence to gain its full support so it will be sitting on the bench on standby. So what is it that encourages us to trust another person to do a job, better than you can do it yourself? Hopefully you will have a few ideas of your own.

  I can recall a time when I was younger and was frequenting yet another one of those phases that found me searching for Confidence in what felt at the time like an alpha male environment. I asked the mechanic in a garage to reverse out of the bay so I could drive out with both of my eyes facing in the right direction, as opposed to compromising my cervical spine because I was trying to look in two places at once. This was ultimately to avoid driving under the influence of – or rather under the gaze of – half a dozen men in crumpled boiler suits held together by brake fluid and goodness knows what else, lined up in readiness for their morning break and some entertainment. Never mind the car having been stripped down to its bare essentials in order to find the original fault; I think the heat from my own internal operating system would have been enough to indicate that if I didn’t scoot off and cool down, I too would have needed rescuing from sheer embarrassment! As a confident driver now, many moons on, I trust myself to get out of a space in a garage forecourt – all by myself.

  Learning to trust other people can come easily to some of us and prove quite difficult for others. When you don’t trust other people because something may have happened in your life that has made it harder to trust, steps need to be taken to overcome any previous cause for mistrust. Once you recognise your own signs, representative of trusting yourself, you will be able to recognise similar signs more easily from other people, who are saying, “You can trust me too”. If someone asks you to trust them, do you follow your instincts which may be telling you to trust implicitly or do you weigh up all the facts and get back to them once you are happy to proceed with an emotional contract?

  You may have fallen off your path and want to get back into the same saddle you were in before you fell, but do you need to trust anything in particular before you can? Do you climb back up in an attempt to conquer your fears, putting trust into yourself not to fall off again? Trust can work in stages and remember, it likes to be trusted completely during each one and you may have to go through various stages before reaching your final destination.

  Once I was in a car crash caused by my own lack of peripheral vision. I was following another car and its driver knew the route. I overlooked the junction ahead and focused on the number plate of the other car so I wouldn’t get lost. With hindsight, I would rather have stopped and asked for directions than experience what happened next. I lost control of the car as I engaged with a truck. My car had two windows taken out and a nice big indent in the side. The truck was OK – so was the man behind the wheel. I learned never to follow anyone ever again – I didn’t trust myself. I was told to get back in the car and drive home. I am not sure if this would be allowed nowadays but I did get back in the ‘saddle’ and I conquered my fears relatively quickly. I think this advice worked on the basis that my choices were limited and I had little time to reflect in the moment. Am I positive, looking back, that my feelings were positive? I certainly wouldn’t have got back into that car if they weren’t! Would you?

  We have to use our own ‘good judgement’ which relies upon Trust to support it when we have to make a choice. Trust issues have to be broken down to avoid indigestion – when you find it difficult to trust, you can find it difficult to swallow. The thought of never trusting again sounds as painful as the thought of being unable to swallow ever again… and why? Because I love my food too much!

  Judgement, which follows, has been waiting patiently and I have a feeling that it is going to reveal a couple of different sides to its character. So let us explore why it has been left to last in this section.

  J*U*D*G*E*M*E*N*T

  Reading Between the Lines

  Fancy a chuckle? How many times do you think you’ve applied a healthy dose of good judgement within a decision-making process only to find that the result made no sense at all! A belated surprise simply got in your way, after the deed was done. Sense did a U-turn, knocking itself out in the process, never to come around to your original way of thinking – ever again. Well… in this instance anyway.

  Judgement is passed around in life like a parcel is thrown around in a game of musical chairs, moving from one person to another until the music stops and then Judgement becomes personal. A parcel can be wrapped up in suspicion and insecurities; anticipation is written all over each layer. This reminds me of playing musical chairs as a child. I remember everything was wrapped up in newspaper back then and none of the words made any sense; nothing has changed for me now: it is still a case of reading between the lines! When it comes to our turn to hold Judgement in the palm of our hands we take a good look and shake it around, hoping that what is about to unfold will not lead to disappointment. The music has stopped and we will shortly find out if Judgement is in a good or bad mood!

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  ‘Good Judgement’ and ‘Poor Judgement’ keep each other on their toes! They keep us on our toes too! We make judgements prior to and following a decision and in doing so, the result may reflect on whether it was indeed based on good judgement or a lack of it! The consequences to the actions of both these characters may be open to interpretation.

  The opening paragraph brought us back down to earth with a bump, reminding us that our first decision, whilst favourable at the time, may have left us with a stream of unintended events to attend to. The judgement hat, previously set aside, now goes back on with an air of authority! As the events undergo further developments Poor Judgement becomes restless and, like a predator on the look out for its next adrenaline rush, it can confuse our senses, clouding our ability to make more of the right decisions. While some loose ends are securely tied, presenting us with no imminent threat of separation, others are rearranged artistically and unravel as they are pulled in another direction.

  Sometimes it is down to our own poor judgement, and we cannot incriminate any other excuses that get in the way. At other times, we make a good decision (or so we think) which we later find out is unable to withstand the pressures that we originally imposed, though would remain in place for some time to come as we sign our life away. Naivety and Optimism are both stripped naked and left to account for their behaviour. Then again, outside influences can play their part too as they are fired across enemy lines to simply distract us from our purpose or hold us back from achieving it – in the way we intended. Other people catapult their own poor judgement and if you are caught in the crossfire or happened to be their intended target, then the consequences of catching that parce
l may well impact on your own direction.

  Is our impish friend Poor Judgement (who we can nickname PJ for now) actually involved, from the beginning, even when a situation was seemingly going very well? Does PJ hover around on the sidelines like an understudy who has learned the lines – just in case the leading character took a turn for the worse – hoping that it can step in and put its own twist on the situation? Is it really that mischievous? PJ is the adolescent that is constantly suffering from growing pains which justifies its behaviour but does not excuse any consequences. It is as innocent as a child who is learning and as naïve as an adult who doesn’t want to grow up.

  What if the main actor was played by Good Judgement and appeared to be on top form having been right for the part all along? After all, it auditioned well and evidently prepared. It was about to be swept away by its audience and a standing ovation was on the cards! What, on earth can take one of our own performances to such dizzy heights and then bring it to its knees, defacing all innocence, tainting the landscape with true disappointment? Did you self-destruct, fall into enemy hands or did the master plan simply not turn out to be the all-inclusive package deal you had bargained for?

  Luxury points you in a direction that sees a contingency plan tucked up your sleeve; another ingenious idea that can be accredited to having good judgement, yet can be difficult to attain. Although it takes vision to create an original plan, we need to put a back-up plan together – just in case. We tend to think of the latter as an afterthought, while knowing full well that it is a sensible thing to do. It may appear self-indulgent to have both plans in place, ahead of time, especially when the construction of the master plan took all of your time up and patience to prepare. Your idea of being sensible, and giving it a role to play, may also depend on whether you are anticipating any misfortune ahead, as a result of PJ or any other entity tripping you over. Plan ‘B’ may not even sit on your radar because Confidence just happens, this time, to be working with you flat out… on plan ‘A’, following in your footsteps and leaving only crystals of sand behind as evidence.

  Finally, the exit strategy you do have in place to move from one plan to the other, if ever such an occasion arose, may never need to be put into effect. Finding one of these strategies in the first place, wedged between cells of grey matter, can be exhausting and potentially distracting. The idea still needs to be extracted from the brain and repositioned somewhere along the arm, under that ‘all-important sleeve’, to allow Failure to abate, should it make any attempts to arrive and instil fear. The overall aim is to put Sense back on the map, leave PJ speechless for a while (which is a tricky thing to do) and bring harmony back to an otherwise inharmonious situation, while judging yourself kindly along the way!

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  There will be many reasons why PJ will appear on your path and run riot, attacking from whichever direction it happens to be sent. Neither forms of Judgement can exist without undergoing an element of self-reflection. More often, the two will get their heads together at the same time to understand what went wrong; or to learn what could have been done better to keep their energies from clashing. You could argue that Good Judgement keeps an eye on PJ far more closely than the other way around. Although, when PJ is keeping a watchful eye on its competition, it may have ulterior motives. Dressed up in its little investigator’s outfit (beige Mac and dark shades), it resonates more with a PI character (private eye) out of a seventies or eighties cop show, than a villain which I may have possibly portrayed. Shrouding PJ with darkness and treating it as though its only mission in life is to overturn any good judgements is probably unfair. I think PJ is just sloppy at times but not vindictive, and so we can explore this point of view later on.

  So far, we have discovered that our own judgement can wander off into the wrong direction and we have to catch up with it before it gets us into trouble or simply applaud it for being right in the first place! We base our judgements on logic and instincts in order to bring about a suitable conclusion and I think this area of debate is worth exploring first as they are both rather influential.

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  Instincts don’t kick you continuously in the pit of your stomach for fun, chatting endlessly and distracting you throughout the day for no good reason. You may notice your instincts nudge you at a point in time, when you are about to make a decision. When an instinct kicks in, it could be asking you to trust the fact it has got your attention for a reason and it would like you to listen and not be too judgemental. We all have instincts and some may prefer to label these as a gut feeling instead. As a human race, we are instinctive people.

  The use of logic, when you are in a quandary, can be just as daunting to rely upon as using your instincts – we tend to question both at the time. Logic isn’t always right or as interesting to follow compared to its more mysterious ally, Instinct, which gets a hard time for being less – how shall we put it? – scientific!

  Logic is the more scientific character out of the two and it may be perceived as a less risky and acceptable process tool to use to problem solve. It is easier to explain how you came to a conclusion by using logic than it is to declare that you followed your instinct because the latter felt right. Logic doesn’t always feel right but the use of logic is often considered a sensible and responsible approach to take when making a decision (especially in times of doubt). Logic can get you off the hook and it can also be used to avoid doing something. Logic is a slightly more controlling character and when it takes over, you may end up not doing what you really wanted to do!

  Instincts are confident and are very happy to be ‘a normal part of your life’. It isn’t the instinct that has the issue when it pops up out of the blue, coming through to you naturally. It is the person who experiences their wake-up calls that tend to assign them a justification as they themselves endure a line of questioning about their decision-making process. Oddly enough we question our instincts, so it shouldn’t be any surprise to us when other people start to do the same and pass judgement!

  Instincts don’t give up on you – but you may give up on following your instincts. Logic may be your safety net even if it doesn’t lead you to where you want to be. The idea that we are all where we are supposed to be in life is not an easy concept for humans to digest but whether logic got you here, or instincts got you here, you are here! Congratulations.

  Plenty of things in life are based on logic and they need to be. I only suggest that some of us may naturally side with logic before considering the value of our instincts when it comes to making decisions. Logic may be broken down more easily while instinct behaves like our personal compass that guides, rather than explains. You can put your finger on how logic has been used but you can’t always pinpoint the reasoning behind your instincts – you just know!

  If you are choosing a colour of a dress, a shirt or let’s say a car, your instincts may direct you to choose a colour that ‘feels right’. When you are at a crossroads and debating on whether to turn left or right, an instinct will rise up from within and make a suggestion. You decide to take a left and go back to the shop to buy the red dress but if it doesn’t fit, you don’t buy it – that’s logic for you! Your instincts may tell you it will fit in two months’ time although it may forget to tell you what to do to make that happen. Sometimes we don’t listen to the entire message and PJ finds your weak spot, cutting it off in mid-flow, and tells you to buy it anyway. The little monkey! If you went ahead and bought a red car because you passed the Ferrari garage as you turned right instead, I wonder if two sets of messages drove you on to the forecourt and made an impression.

  Logic and Instinct are definitely allies that may conflict at times yet have respect for each other. Your instincts have no ego and have no issue in telling you to use your logic on certain occasions. This is probably why it is well suited to mingling with our friend Trust, which you may recall has no ego either. When you trust your instincts you are drawn back into one of those emotion
al contracts which requires nothing more than a silent handshake to secure the bond.

  So why are some instinctive people often happy to be humble and use logic, judging the two concepts on their own merits, while some logical people dismiss the idea of using instincts as a ‘nice-to-have feeling’ and prefer to stick to the facts. Facts have their place. Facts can be used in isolation and thank goodness they can stand on their own two feet but sometimes they need to be put into perspective and be joined together by a little intuition.

  When making a decision, if you don’t know whether to use logic or your instinct you may end up tossing a coin in the air as a last resort and hope for the best. Instincts don’t mind being used as a last resort but your first instinct is usually right. Instincts are often undervalued. They run around free and they are an integral part of our internal operating system. Some may say that they belong to our spirit that is hosted by our human body, and others may say that that is just an excuse to let us off the hook!

  We don’t always judge our instincts with the respect they deserve. If we had to pay for an instinct maybe we would value them more in the same way we often heed advice when we have paid for it, trusting an expert’s opinion (even if we choose not to take the advice in the long run). It is hard to judge what the outcome will be when we use our instincts and this is why we revert back to good old logic: safe, reliable and somewhat boring at times. When we explored Path it was clear that sometimes people avoid taking detours because Logic got in the way before their Instincts could get a word across. We could also consider that Instincts may have prompted you to use Logic rather than take an adventure and you didn’t realise at the time it was walking in your shadow to protect (sounds like a natural bodyguard to me!).

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