Why the charge feels like insight

The charge doesn't feel like a guess. It feels like seeing clearly. It feels like the moment you stopped being naive about someone. And it's worth being honest about what it gives you, because a habit that gave nothing wouldn't last.

The first thing it gives is speed. You don't have time to investigate every interruption. A motive is a summary, and a summary lets you move on. The second is protection. If you decide they meant it, you can't be caught out later by discovering they meant it. Being wrong in the suspicious direction feels safer than being wrong in the trusting direction, because the first is only a wasted evening and the second is being a fool. The third is that the charge is sometimes right. Some people are careless with you because they don't value you. Some interruptions are power. Some silences are a decision. A book that pretended otherwise would deserve to be put down.

The fourth thing it gives is harder to admit. The charge makes you the one who was wronged, and the wronged party has a clear position. You know what happened, you know who did it, and you know what you think of them. The alternative, that it was nothing, that they didn't think about you at all, that the unanswered message is sitting under forty others, offers no position. You're not wronged. You're just someone whose message hasn't been answered. That's less comfortable than it sounds, and I think a fair amount of charging is a way of avoiding it.

So the charge gives speed, protection, occasional accuracy and a role. What the next chapters ask is what each costs, and whether the speed is buying anything, whether the protection protects, how occasional the accuracy is, and what the role does to the people around you.