Even experts err
I like to go bike riding in the mornings for 2 reasons: 1. It's before peak sun hours and is usually cooler. 2. I find I need to do exercise earlier in the day, as later I get too busy or too tired.
This morning my husband said it should be a good day for my bike ride, for it was cooler than earlier in the week. I said that it looked like rain, though. But he insisted that the weather forecast said it would only rain later in the day.
Well, I've learned to trust my own perception even if it is not corroborated by what the "experts" say. So I decided that I had better take advantage of the cooler and not yet wet weather to mow the lawn. Actually, that is a form of exercise, too, particularly because we have a rotary rather than a power mower. I was just about done when I first felt drops. Then there were some more drops. So the expert prediction turned out wrong, and I was right.
This may seem like a trivial instance, but there many instances in which "experts" tell us their own opinion as fact. They claim the authority to tell us things are so even when our own perception tells us differently. This was certainly the case when I was in labor with my first child. I was checked into the hospital because my water broke. But the "experts" thought it would be many, many hours before the baby would be born; they even seemed to think that they would have to induce the next morning. Plus all the birthing rooms were occupied. So I was left in a regular room rather than a birthing room. They did not offer anything to ease my pain, declaring that the contractions were "mild." Right, they knew what was going on better than I did because they were the experts, and I was only a first-time mother. At about 2 in the morning, when I said that I thought the baby could be coming, the resident reluctantly made her way to the room. She obviously thought I was wasting her time and was genuinely shocked to see the baby was indeed coming. Remember, I was not in a birthing room at the time, so she attempted to have me transported. By that point, it was rather late in the game. That fact, combined with the elevator going down instead of up, resulted in my first baby being born in the elevator of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, though I had been checked in for 15 hours already.
This morning my husband said it should be a good day for my bike ride, for it was cooler than earlier in the week. I said that it looked like rain, though. But he insisted that the weather forecast said it would only rain later in the day.
Well, I've learned to trust my own perception even if it is not corroborated by what the "experts" say. So I decided that I had better take advantage of the cooler and not yet wet weather to mow the lawn. Actually, that is a form of exercise, too, particularly because we have a rotary rather than a power mower. I was just about done when I first felt drops. Then there were some more drops. So the expert prediction turned out wrong, and I was right.
This may seem like a trivial instance, but there many instances in which "experts" tell us their own opinion as fact. They claim the authority to tell us things are so even when our own perception tells us differently. This was certainly the case when I was in labor with my first child. I was checked into the hospital because my water broke. But the "experts" thought it would be many, many hours before the baby would be born; they even seemed to think that they would have to induce the next morning. Plus all the birthing rooms were occupied. So I was left in a regular room rather than a birthing room. They did not offer anything to ease my pain, declaring that the contractions were "mild." Right, they knew what was going on better than I did because they were the experts, and I was only a first-time mother. At about 2 in the morning, when I said that I thought the baby could be coming, the resident reluctantly made her way to the room. She obviously thought I was wasting her time and was genuinely shocked to see the baby was indeed coming. Remember, I was not in a birthing room at the time, so she attempted to have me transported. By that point, it was rather late in the game. That fact, combined with the elevator going down instead of up, resulted in my first baby being born in the elevator of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, though I had been checked in for 15 hours already.
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