Listen to your gut

So, as of tomorrow, I will have been here three months and have but one month to go! Really, I can't believe it. Last fall semester seemed like a year long and this year it has literally ticked by. Thanksgiving is drawing closer and I face a dilemma; do I stay or do I go? A friend has extended an invitation for me to come home with her and while I feel completely welcome, I feel a pull to stay in Nevada ironically! Mom sent me a book on intuition and it states that your intuition is always pulling you in the correct direction; whether you know it or not. How can you blindly trust something like that! An intuition has always seemed hold great weight. Movies, books, personal stories..."listen to your gut." Just how powerful is this inner truth? And if it is indeed a truth then how is it that we can have such great problems without any clear solutions? Is there anything too big for your intuition? Apparently, as the book says, there is not.

In my ethics class, we were covering Immanuel Kant's theory on moral and their weight on human behavior. Kant contends that every human is endowed with moral instincts that are free of personal want or belief. They are basically dutiful and objective. We should not help the woman who's fallen down because we like to; we should do it because it is our duty. When you think about it, Kant is right, the cat who ate the canary knows he is immoral and the child with his hand in the cookie jar after dinner knows it as well. So if these morals are instinctive, is that to say that our intuition is only morally driven? One would believe that their own intuition would be personally fitted to their "chosen life path." We (or at least I) usually learn that growing up. The young girl deciding which man to marry doesn't judge it morally, or does she? Are the wills of the heart and the gut the same?

The term "listen to your heart" is often applied to scenarios where love is involved. Intuition is more reserved for life choices; forks in the road. That being said, "intuition" seems like our sensible inner voice. Voices of the heart could be more of a blind will; pure feeling without conscious thought. It wouldn't make sense that we have two different voices within us. Our brain creates enough confusion! Perhaps our intuition takes on different voices depending on our question and predicaments. Lets say for now that the heart and the gut are one voice. If one is governed by morals, why would it be that the the other is void of such principles? Are the wills of our hearts morally governed as well? Deciding who to marry? Is that a moral dilemma? The word moral carries with it a somewhat objective approach. To say that our heart is objective and unemotional is a little harsh. If we have the choice between two mates, and we want one but our moral self chooses the other, which are we to pick? Like I hypothesized before, is it possible that we have a life path that only our intuition is aware of? If not, then for what purpose does the intuition exist? We have our analytical mind; isn't that enough? This could lead to the claim that our intuition knows something about our life than we don't.

I have always had a hard time listening to my gut. Every now and then I ask it a question and I get the ultimate morally based rational response. Well thats no fun! If I wanted my mom's advice I would have called her! For this reason, I have often assumed that my intuition is crazy, doesn't exist or my mother has placed a voice recording of her in my stomach. Is morality all that my inner voice bases its answers on? Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I let my gut lead me through a day of decision making. Would I be on track with my personal life path or merely one of high morals?