Crazy vs. Brave and the Bomb Maker

Sometimes I feel like my life is a bomb on the countdown to detonate. It’s just me, racing against the clock to disarm it before it destroys the whole city block.

And my brain is like the bomb maker. As I hold the device in my hand, my expert training kicks in. It tells me to cut the blue wire. But then I stop and consider that perhaps the bomb maker anticipated this knowledge and switched the wires- a double cross just to make things interesting. Perhaps, if I don’t cut the red one, everything is about to blow sky high.

Our minds can be tricky, especially when life has dished up some complication. It’s a big powerful thing , this mind, and should be respected for it’s ability to synthesize so much at once. Sometimes, it protects us, keeps us from breaking down in tight spaces. It shuts things off so we can just keep moving. Sometimes it helps us to rationalize things that we want/need to believe in order to follow a certain course of action.

But sometimes, it just plays tricks. And when I want what is real and I feel like my brain is the evil mastermind trying to confuse me, I get frustrated. It’s a crazy thing really, when you are trying to grow beyond your damage, ascend your socialization and conditioning and yet somehow you just keep getting pulled back in.

I spent so many years ignoring my heart- my gut- that thing in the middle that knows what is really going on. We are taught to ignore it. I learned to depend on my brain to cover all necessary decision making. But the faulty thing about this is my brain can justify anything. Seriously, give me a topic and I can argue a side of it that I don’t truly believe in. Anybody know a lawyer? I rest my case.

I have this theory about being crazy verses being brave. I believe that we, as a society, tend to judge these characteristics purely based on outcome (brain) instead of impulse (heart). My current life is a great example. If I had moved to Berlin with no language, family or job and then returned 6 months later, everyone would have accepted me back with open arms. They would have just concluded that I was crazy. But because I have transplanted myself so completely, somehow managing to create a life I love, it’s different. I have people tell me all the time that I am brave. But if you really think about it, it’s the same energy. My heart said go, so I did. What happened next was just part of my story. The real exercise was in not intellectualizing my clear internal directive. The real lesson was listening to my heart instead of the bomb maker.

Whatever you want to call it- your gut, that middle bit, your heart – that’s the money spot. It’s the core of us that knows beyond knowing. It’s got the goods in this action adventure film of our lives and I’ve got a feeling, at least in this episode, it just might save the day.