The Spike

There are moments when something happens and the reaction arrives before the thought does.

A tightening. A flash of heat. An almost immediate sense that something is off.

I have become increasingly interested in that moment.

Not because I think instinct is always right. It clearly isn’t. We carry history into rooms with us. Old experiences, sensitivities, prejudices, embarrassments and unfinished business can all masquerade as intuition if we let them.

But neither do I think every strong reaction should be treated as something primitive that needs to be overcome.

Sometimes the spike is there for a reason.

Someone has crossed a boundary. Something doesn’t quite add up. There is hypocrisy in the room. A little piece of behaviour has revealed something larger.

The difficulty is that the spike often arrives with its own suggested remedy.

• Retaliate.
• Correct them.
• Say the thing.
• Make sure they know you noticed.

That part is less reliable.

The Stoics had an interesting way of thinking about this. They distinguished between the first impression and the judgement that follows it. The initial reaction is not really the issue. It arrives. The discipline is in deciding whether to agree with the story it immediately begins telling you.

I like that distinction because it does not require becoming emotionally anaesthetised.

I have no particular ambition to become a sandal-wearing Stoic sage who has trained himself out of noticing when someone is being unreasonable.

There are times when something does need to be addressed immediately.

A boundary sometimes has to be set in the room, not three days later after a period of philosophical reflection.

The useful distinction for me is becoming this:

Stop the behaviour now. Decide what it means later.

Those are different things.

• “No, that’s not appropriate.”
• “We’re not doing that.”
• “That isn’t your decision to make.”

All of those can be said in real time without needing to settle the entire matter in the same moment.

The danger begins when the objective quietly changes.

There is a difference between stopping something and settling something.

Once I feel the urge to make the other person feel my displeasure, the spike has probably moved from information into retaliation.

That is usually the point where the better sentence is:

Let’s leave this here. I need to think about it.

I am trying to get better at saying that.

Not because I distrust my instincts completely. Quite the opposite.

I think some instincts are extraordinarily useful.

But intensity is not proof.

The first reaction might be signal.

It might also be residue.

The work is figuring out which.

A useful question afterward is surprisingly simple:

What actually happened?

Not what I think it meant.

Not what it reminded me of.

Not what sort of person I think does that sort of thing.

Just what happened.

Stripped of tone and history, does it still look wrong?

Sometimes the answer is no.

Sometimes the answer is very clearly yes.

And in those cases, there is no great philosophical victory in talking myself out of what I saw.

The aim is not to become less reactive.

It is to become more accurate.

To let the spike wake me up without automatically letting it drive.

That feels like a much more useful discipline.