WARNING. Your brain is not always right. You’d like to think it is; and that it’s really smart. And sometimes it’s very smart. It knows when you need to go left if a big truck is coming into your lane, or when you want to go to the bathroom, your brain will tell you how to find a public restroom. But your brain is also an idiot. Your brain will tell you you’re an idiot. Remember when you wake up in the morning and your brain tells you you’re an idiot for eating too many cookies the night before? This is not very intelligent. Your brain should help you, not call you an idiot. 

Listen to your brain speak sometimes. Take a moment and just listen. Some of the things your brain is saying are so wrong and far-fetched and just plain out there that you should see a psychiatrist or a therapist just to find out how to tell your brain to shut up. I’m not recommending help either way, but just listen. 

Your brain has a problem. I don’t mean a clinical problem. I’m not advocating taking a pill, blue, yellow or green or red. I’m saying simply your brain is stupid. Sometimes.

Sure. It can figure out a math problem. But that’s not wisdom; that’s simple primate intelligence. A monkey can figure out how to put a blue square block into a blue square hole. We can all train our brains to figure out how many bananas remain on a train if a train left the station with 22 bananas, made 16 stops and lost a banana at each stop. We can all subtract 16 from 22 and come up with 6.

You could probably train your dog to figure out the answer. Maybe.

But when your brain starts telling you you’re 1) stupid 2) ugly 3) fat 4) worthless 5) an idiot (for whatever you did), then you need to give your brain a time out and eat a candy bar and reassess who’s in charge.

Is it you or your brain? Are you one and the same? Do you know the difference between your brain, your mind and your soul? I’m not sure where my brain and mind end and my soul begins. I feel most soulful when listening to Marvin Gaye. Or Beethoven. But hey, that’s just me. Some people feel soulful feeding orchids in a greenhouse. Someone else might want to watch seagulls fighting over a piece of beach trash. These people find watching birds attack each other a highly soulful activity.

Someone else might want to sit and listen to flute music and follow their breath with their eyes closed.  

That’s all well and good, but when that brain starts firing on all cylinders and starts’a worryin’ ‘bout the bills, what you said to your co-worker the day before or what you’re going to do with your life, and you go off the rails with fear, dread, worry, anxiety and a complete and utter panic attack, then it’s time to calm that beast of a brain down and find another strategy for dealing with your life affairs.

That’s when some higher portion of yourself steps in and tells your brain or mind or whatever is thinking these thoughts to calm the fuck down. Shut up and smile. Or something. Breathe. Do SOMETHING to settle yourself down and be present in the moment when those seagulls start coming after your hot dog at the beach.

Remember, just because your brain has a lot of little brain cells, all sitting around in your noggin waiting for something to do does not mean they get to run the show.

YOU run the show. Tell your brain to settle down, have a candy bar and watch a dumb movie.

That’s why people watch so many movies and so much TV and so many TikTok videos.

They want to give their brains and minds a vacation. They want to chill out, forget themselves for a while, settle into a silly cat video or a Netflix series or just some dumb Christmas movie about how the mom falls in love with a movie actor Santa.

They can forget their troubles, wash away their worries, focus their 200 billion or whatever brain cells on a small screen flashing Santa’s little elves running down the street yelling “It’s Christmas.”

Something like that.

©2022 Bruce Palma. All rights reserved.