Objectivity.
We might think we are logical. But every now and then someone comes along and smashes our preconception that we are sane, sober. That event makes us rethink who we are, what we know. And in the end, all we can do is state the obvious: we are subjective, no matter how hard we try not to be.
I am one of the people who take pride in the ability to distance oneself from situations. Just stand back and see what is really going on. It is one of the abilities that Forbes[1] claims successful people use to fight stress. It eases assessment and the following decisions appear to be more solid in nature and turn out to be more effective. For some it is easy, for others it is impossible.
To train oneself in the art of stepping away from the situation, one can simply look at everyday things, from complex machines to simple devices. And simply think of their essence, how they are put together, what do they do? How does a crane go up, what's the point of having rebar rods in concrete, how do pump valves work? Simple curiousities that open up a whole new world and force you to look beyond what's plainly visible. It forces you to look deeper into any problem, analyze it to find alternative solutions, pros and cons for these solutions to understand why these alternatives are not used. It is a bit of analytical thinking that can be trained with little everyday exercises that one can do almost anywhere at any time. As long as you can think, you can never be truly bored.
However, training analytical thinking is as effective as Pavlov's dog conditioning. It certainly has effect, but it does not rule out alternative mechanisms, it does not rule out malfunctions. Every once in a while even the most objective mind will miss or ignore something willingly and create subjectivity. Every once in a while it reassesses its values and hopes, thus changing the criteria on which its decisions and evaluations are based. Every once in a while a bit of subjectiveness will come in no matter what we do. After all, we are human. We use our gut instinct, we jump in strange places, we travel in the dark. Just hoping that we make it through, hoping we find a piece of light.
Sometimes subjectiveness is induced by a certain emotional event or by an emotional reaction to someone we meet. It could be something that rocks your boat, or something that rocks your world. It can range from winning a huge scholarship to seeing a nice smile and sinking in it. As long as it creates a spontaneous emotional response, it creates a high risk of subjectiveness. Which isn't necessarily bad, sometimes things feel funny for a reason. Instincts are what have kept us alive thus far, they have guided us through thick and thin so that we could arrive at this moment in time to read these words, written by someone who reached the point of writing them thanks to listening to his instincts.
As I mentioned earlier, I am an avid fan of objectivity, of mental distancing. Surprisingly many situations can be solved by it, resulting in mature and responsible decisions. But no extreme is ever effective, and as such, one can hardly ever ignore feelings when we find someone special. Friendships are difficult to form without listening to instincts, relationships are impossible. Our everyday life requires the use of subjective analyses since every single situation in our lives includes unknown variables. The more complicated the situation, the more we need to analyze it before we can trust our instincts, for they can be mistaken. Often enough we cannot see enough, and hence we must use our gut. Then again, if you listen to every gut feeling, you never get anything done.
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