At the gut level?

Reader question:

Please explain this sentence: He also likes music and, at the gut level, I feel like we’re a match.

My comments:

The speaker likes him. And sharing the same interest (in music) makes her feel hopeful – that the two of them are a match made in heaven.

I’m exaggerating perhaps, but that’s what the speaker indicates.

Although, admittedly, this is something she feels at the gut level.

In other words, it is not wholly rational. Perhaps she cannot give good reasons why she feels this way – “that we’re a match”.

Many people who are in relationships will tell you that sharing the same or similar hobbies doesn’t guarantee a happy relationship.

A happy relationship takes much more.

For example?

For example, tolerance for each other’s quirks and peculiarities. Giving each other space. Being there for them during their vulnerable moments, when they need you the most. Being able to listen and not to be too judgmental.

I can go on.

But, I admit, these things are not what comes to mind uppermost when people first meet. At the initial stage of a relationship, people do look for and are satisfied with similarities, not to mention other things at the surface level, good looks, e.g.

Let’s face it, good looks and similar hobbies do make us happy and feel hopeful. This feel-good factor is important. It makes us want to meet them again, for starters.

This feel-good thing is what happens to us at the gut level. This is our gut feeling, our intuition, something we feel by instinct rather than by reasoning, after running through all the pros and cons in our head and reaching a logical conclusion.

Gut feeling is so called because it is a feeling that appears to come from the gut, our stomach rather than our head.

In our example, the speaker’s reaction comes from her gut. She may actually feel her stomach literally drop upon hearing that he also likes music. Or, on the other hand, she may feel her heart leap because she’s so excited.

At any rate, this is a feeling at the gut level and she cannot explain it, because it’s not something that occurs at the brain level, after much rationalizing and thinking things over.

Got it?

All right, here are media examples of how people feel “at the gut level” in various situations:

1. It doesn’t take much to cause a panic when it comes to sharks. On Wednesday, two kayakers off the shore of Plymouth had a run-in with a great white shark when the toothy fish took what State Police called an “exploratory bite’’ of one of their crafts. Essentially, the shark asked “Are you food?’’ and decided, “No, you’re not.’’

Add to that the actual and false sightings in Massachusetts waters this summer, and you’ve got a state full of people quoting “Jaws’’ and towns shutting down beaches.

The public’s alarm at the recent stories may be understandable at the gut level, but it’s also wildly out of proportion to the actual risk of a shark attack, deadly or otherwise, in Massachusetts.

If our go-to reference point is a work of fiction released in 1975, we don’t really know what we’re talking about when we talk about shark attacks.

The truth is, shark attacks are not a problem in Massachusetts – or pretty much anywhere else in the world.

“We’re all much more likely to die in the car on the way to the beach than to die from a shark attack,’’ said Simon Thorrold, a shark researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. “Way more people are going to drown on Cape Cod than are going to be attacked by a white shark.’’

These aren’t the coastal waters off of South Africa or Western Australia, where most reported incidents of death and injuries at the hand of shark interactions take place. And “most’’ is a subjective term.

In 2013, there were three great white shark-related deaths in South Africa and all of Australia. Globally, there were 10 deaths and 62 injuries in all of 2013. Total. In a world with 7 billion people. And those numbers are actually on the high side when compared to recent years.

What’s the actual risk in Massachusetts? There have been two recorded shark attacks since 1936. There was a fatal attack that year, though the victim, Joseph Troy, could have survived a similar attack today, thanks to medical and transportation advances. In 2012, a shark bit a Colorado man on the leg off the coast of Truro.

- Everyone Needs to Chill Out About Great White Sharks in Mass. Waters, Boston.com, September 4, 2014.

2. When the Staheli siblings found out in 2003 that their family would be moving to Brazil, the four children were already seasoned world travelers.

Their parents were from Utah, but by then, the kids had walked on white sand beaches in the Maldives and seen the Egyptian pyramids from the back of a camel. They were living in London when their father, 39-year-old Todd Staheli, was sent to South America by his employer, Shell Oil Co.

But not long after they arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Wesley, who was 13 at the time, felt that something was wrong.

In an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune – their first with any news organization about what happened next – the now-adult Staheli siblings can’t quite name why the move to Brazil was so jarring.

“There is not a logical reason that it didn’t feel right,” Wesley said. “But at the gut level, this did not work. We were not settling in.”

That unease isn’t apparent in the last photo the Stahelis took as a family, in October 2003. In the picture, which was snapped on a boat at a Brazilian resort, Wesley; Logan, 10; Madison (often called Maddie), 8; and Carly, 3; sit close to their parents. They’re all smiling, bathed in the sunlight reflecting off the water.

Still, the apprehension was so pervading that the family even discussed having the kids and their mother return home to Utah, though they decided against it.

It marked their eighth move as a family, the siblings estimate. Amid unfamiliar cultures, languages and people, the family’s tight-knit bond was the constant.

“We just had each other,” Wesley said.

That was especially true when Todd and their mother, Michelle, 36, were fatally attacked as they slept, one month after that sunny day on the boat.

As Todd Staheli moved his family from country to country over the years, his kids only vaguely knew why.

“At 10 years old, the goings-on of an oil executive are neither interesting nor understandable,” Logan said.

What the kids did understand was that their father was “very effective and good” at his job, Logan said.

- ‘A horror story’: Staheli siblings speak out nearly 20 years after parents were killed in Brazil, SLTrib.com, April 26, 2022.

3. The cost of living in Los Angeles County is going up with an increase in sales tax across the county starting April 1, and tariffs from the Trump administration.

The tax increase comes amid already high sales taxes countywide. Pomona will see sales tax now at 10.5% and some cities like Lancaster and Palmdale will see sales tax as high as 11.25%.

The sales tax increase comes after the passing of Measure A during the 2024 election. Measure A advocated for a half percent sales tax increase aimed to help reduce homelessness by increasing affordable housing units and moving homeless individuals into permanent housing. Randy Stein, an associate professor in the College of Business Administration, said these taxes aren’t necessarily a loss but rather more of an investment.

“At the gut level, it’s like, ‘No, I don’t want any increase. More taxes. More taxes are bad,’ which discounts two things,” Stein said. “A tax is not necessarily a loss. It gets invested into something, maybe not well, but it does go somewhere. And number two, if you didn’t bring it up, I don’t think people would really even notice a quarter percent sales tax increase.”

Some students are hoping their tax payments are going toward useful things, but they’re also seeking transparency from the county when it comes to the expenditure of taxpayers’ money.

“If I’m paying extra on something, I would hope it’s going toward where it needs to be, like maybe homelessness, schools, anywhere like that,” said Lawrence Tran, an industrial engineering student. “We should know where our money is going, whether it’s going to the right places or not.”

- The cost of living in LA County is getting high: increased sales taxes, tariffs, how they impact you, by Darren Loo, PolyPost.com, Darren Loo News March 18, 2025.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）