Sense

[redbird]

Various of you have said sensible things in response to my post yesterday.

It's true that I limit who I rant to, and when, and that I try to give good advice if I'm giving advice at all. It's true that I've got some idea of what I can and can't do (bilocation and teleportation not being things we have available), a sense of my priorities, and schedule based in part on that.

The thing is, it's not that I don't think I'm a sensible person--it's that being told I am repeatedly, by people who I also think of as sensible, feels like people repeatedly pointing out that I'm right-handed or a native speaker of English. Yes, I am. So are most of them. But what they're saying is not "Hey, you're right-handed, just like me" (which would be weird already) but "Hey, you're right-handed, how cool!" as if it were something unusual.

I wonder if my friends are giving themselves--yourselves--enough credit for your own intelligence and good judgment. The only sensible thing I can think of that I do and a lot of other people don't is that I don't run for subway trains. I'll run for a once-an-hour commuter rail, or for a train or plane on which I have a ticket and a reservation--though I usually leave enough time that I don't need to, being if anything neurotic about being early--but not for the rush hour A when there's another along in a few minutes.

[I think I need an introspection/self-analysis userpic, or to assign one of my existing ones to that; this is more the relationships icon. Nusuth.]

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Well, I do think there's a way in which 'sensible' maps to 'thinks like me.' So 'you seem sensible' sometimes means, for instance, 'ah, you said what I wanted to say,' or 'THANK you, I've been wanting someone to point that out.'

In which case, 'You're right handed. Cool!' essentially means, 'I was starting to wonder if I was the only right-handed person here...not that it really matters, but you know.'

[pnh.livejournal.com]

I suspect that when your friends refer to you as "sensible" they aren't so much claiming for you an extraordinary amount of "common sense" so much as they are noting a characteristic of your temperament. Of your, well, sensibility.

[redbird]

I think you're right.

I also think it's possible that there are things more easily seen from outside, and that they are in fact spotting a distinguishing feature that is to me as invisible as the freckles on my back.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Leaving aside the main point of your post (which by and large I agree with, except to observe that sensible is a lot less common than all that) I notice that headway seems to make a difference in passengers running for a metro train.

I mean, it's obvious, of course, but I didn't actually observe the difference in behavior until I was riding a system with 90 second headways at rush hour. People did not run for those trains. They hardly even walked fast. :)