Thinking with my brain, instead of my heart

I hadn’t eaten all day. I looked over the menu and the choices looked wonderful. Of course, when the food came, my appetite had magically gone with it. 

As the old timers from my hometown would say, “My eyes were bigger than my stomach.”

I’ve been thinking lately about the moments when my brain tells me one thing but my heart says something else, it’s usually things my brain thinks that I’ll like, but my heart knows the real truth.  

Here’s a few of them.

Image by Filip Urban by Unsplash.

–Putting in a garden. My mother grew up on a farm. When we were kids, she would always have a garden and could make something grow out of nothing. Rugged, crappy dirt? No problem for her. What about me? Good grief forget it. Oh, I love the idea of growing a few tomatoes, carrots, or even some peas right out my front door. Like clockwork, every spring, I think about starting a small garden, and even a few raised garden or flower beds, and every year, I shake my head and realize the insanity of the idea.

–Traveling cross country via train. I keep seeing stories about purchasing a ticket on Amtrak’s auto train and taking the train to Orlando or traveling out west or across Canada. Oh, the trips look stunning, I absolutely love the idea, but, something tells me, the train and I would not be a great team.  

Image by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi by Pexels.

–Rainy days. I say I love rainy days, but when it rains, I’m always checking the weather to see when it’s going to be sunny again. I start out singing Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains” and soon dive into dark, dark hole in the ground screaming Adele’s “Set Fire to The Rain.” What’s up with that?

–Buying rental property or redoing a property. I see these folks doing it on HGTV and it always looks interesting, and dare I say it, easy, but then I think about it and say to myself, “I’m doing this on the weekend, no way? I don’t have time now, how am I going to fit in a second property?”

–Taking on a new outgoing career. Oh, I see lots of roles that require you to be outgoing, on-the-go, and extroverted. I come across some of these roles and they look interesting, but then I stop and question: “Who are you? And what have you done with Brian?”

Image by Artem Podrez by Pexels.

–Drinking water. I say I love drinking cold, clean water, but it’s never my first choice. I’ll choose soda, iced tea, coffee, and even juice to drink most every time. Ugh.

–Reality TV. The rest of the world seems to love Reality TV — Love Island, Top Chef, Survivor, the list seems to get longer and longer each year — but I never seem to really get it. I love great stories, so they would seem to be right up my ally, but anytime I start to watch one of these shows and I sense that the producers are editing things to draw out an emotion, I’m gone. So yes, I’m usually gone by the first commercial break.

…..

“A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.”

—Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“Your heart often knows things before your mind does.”

—Polly Adler

“One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart — intelligence and goodness — shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.”

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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