Old Man Logic needs to shut his mouth, and go watch Wheel of Fortune!

The following is a selected excerpt from my correspondence.


Ah, the ever familiar battle between the Head and the Heart. Old Man Logic and the beast called Emotion. Like Palestine and Israel, it will never end. This sounds like a thick pill to swallow, but there are hopeful options: Peace Treaties.

I'm starting to learn that neither side is good or bad, wrong or right. But, the two of them both reside in this head of mine, and they have to learn to work together before they end up killing each other and possibly my body as a whole.

After my divorce, I think I became a bit afraid of how strong my emotions were for someone who constantly shat on my self esteem. After about a year on group therapy, I finally started to feel like I was figuring it all out. Essentially I didn't trust those rotton emotions, and I would start to rely on Old Man Logic to guide my decisions. Well that's all fine and dandy until that Goddamn bastard LOVE jumps on your back after a couple months of dating and digging a lovely new lady friend.

LOVE starts to whisper sweet nothings in your ear, making you perform all kinds of inefficient subtleties for this other human being. Opening doors, back rubs, listening to stories about work drama, giving advice about work drama (then learning to never give advice about work drama ever again), small gifts when you are out of town, kisses on the top of the head, back scratching, spooning, prolonged gazes, fingers through hair, notes on windshields, surprise Chinese carryout, and buying an extra toothbrush. And hopefully the LOVE whispering in his/her ear will start telling them just as many inefficient subtleties that they Must perform for you.

None of these things are logical, if you think about it. There is no reason to run my fingers through the back on my girlfriend's hair while she is driving, or rubbing her knee for a brief moment while I futz with the radio. But, I feel compelled to do these things from time to time. I'm not doing this because I'm clingy, but I also don't do it because I feel obligated to. I just feel it. It feels good to convey that emotional bond and connection with another human being. I can't explain it with cold logic, because it just seems absurd when you really try.

Take for instance the scientific view that we mate and pair up as a way to best raise our future generations of children with the support of a family system and local community. Sure, these seem like logical reasons to explain why we form intimate relationships with others, and some people may actually take some of these things into consideration when choosing a mate. But this is not LOVE!

LOVE is stupid, chipper, whimsical, electric, smitten, chaotic, engrossing, magnetic, and other adjectives as well. It's an emotion, and we can't waste too much time trying to explain it with a mortal's logic.

So it's just an emotion, but we both know how strong those little bastards can be at times. Instead of fighting with the emotion, just acknowledge it. In a way, this disarms the ticking time bomb. If you start to feel yourself slipping, just say to yourself, "Oh, yeah that's depression creeping in. What up depression? Make yourself at home." Go to your room, or do whatever you like to do when you are sad. Fully embrace the melancholy, the grief, the sorrow, the pain, and just let the tears fall where they may.

This may be a bit intense the first couple times. I cried a lot my first time. I cried, and cried, and cried some more. Probably some old tears that were never fully ringed out from years ago. I just, let go. The key for this to be effective, is that you have to ignore logic, because it is anything but. You can't beat yourself up. You have to learn, to enjoy crying.

Once we stop trying to always apply logic to explain emotion, then we can deal with the two of them as different camps that will never understand one another. But they can help each other, so long as they both stop trying to jokey for position in a race to the Final Answer, which we never end up getting to in the end anyway (but that's a whole other rant).