After my recent escapade, where I slammed the word love with a pedantic, snobbish, overly satirical observation, I would like to try to make amends (if that’s even possible) by presenting a softer side of me.

You know a new and improved version of the brash and tactically incorrect P.G.

Think two-ply toilet tissue instead of corn cob kind of improvement.

Who says I’m not willing to start at the bottom?

But I haven’t always been this sweet, adorable, lovable poster child of innocence and humility.

Too much?

Ahem.

Some of my best friends (whom I’ve never met) have helped me adopt a much different take on things lately. They’re a sharing bunch of people, often swapping electrons back and forth with me. Offering differing opinions, many different perspectives I’d never thought about before.

Interestingly enough, they’ve helped me shed the tough shell I’d built around my heart as protection from everyone except my closest family members.

For my family, I’d already shown them the way to my heart.

It’s a secret passage, and most times requires either a secret decoder ring or the right password of the day (I change it frequently for security purposes) to get in.

But they all know how to get to my heart, and I spend very little time having to think about letting them in. But lately, whoo boy, recently this grisly mass of throbbing muscle (yes I have one) has been sending the most illogically impossible dreams to my brain.

And it’s making me kind of nervous.

<me stamping my feet>

I don’t want to be a marshmallow inside. Stop calling me a big old teddy bear. I’m a irascible curmudgeon d*mmit. That has always been my claim to fame. Stop allowing me to feel.

Sob.

It’s only now I’ve just learned how to connect my heart to my brain. H*ll I’ve been rolling along for over sixty years and have managed to function just fine without this connection, so how come it’s happening now?

How is it I’ve just now learned how to better interpret feelings spawned by my inner soul? These illogical dreams of my heart.

After all these years this is how my heart treats me?

By drumming up all these wonderfully sad/happy emotions, which make me feel like throwing my arms around every Human in the entire world and giving them all a hug?

By aching, simply aching when I think about all the kindness and love for others, I should have been doling out all these years.

By taking the lead on emotional matters when I’ve always tucked those impossibly illogical thoughts away and let my brain do the walking?

What in the world is happening to my heart?

What’s that?

My heart has done what?

Grown?

Oh, the connection between my brain and heart has grown? Okay, now I get it. Uh, no, I don’t. Okay, I get it, I get it. I was just playing around.

It’s incredible how much I’ve learned over the last two years with you, folks. I suppose up until just lately, I’ve led a life of emotional hermitage. You know, going to work and stepping out of myself to do those work things I needed to do, then coming home and shedding my cocoon to spend quality time with my wife and family.

I was a social derelict, and in all honesty, I was happy to be one until I started meeting all of you.

Some of you offered gentle directions toward a path of enlightenment. Some of you grabbed me by the ear and tugged because I was so d*mned stubborn. But each of you in your own way helped me become, in my opinion, a much better person, a much more caring individual.

Especially to all of those in the world around me.

Let’s be real folks. You showed me how to soften a semi-hardened heart. Still, my heart has never been hard for my wife and my daughters. As I said earlier, they know the way in.

But with all of your help, I’ve learned to let my heart dream impossibly illogical thoughts and send them to my brain.

I’ve learned not to reject those dreams but to savor them, let them course through the synopses of my old noggin. I’ve learned to revel in the absolutely delightful way I feel when I do.

I’m shaking my head and grinning like a jacka*s as I’m typing this.

When I stop to think about the time I joined these ranks of genuinely beautiful people and fantastic writers, I remember how disconnected I was each time I wrote.

I didn’t know any of you. None of you knew me, and I was happy as a clam about that. And I was just about as emotionally sterile as a Human could possibly be.

And then you folks happened.

Oh, dear Lord, it’s happening again. I’m shaking my head and smiling.

Thank you for helping me stay the course. Thank you for helping me learn to connect my brain to my heart.

It’s still going to take me a while to really understand exactly how this new-found connection is supposed to work. I mean, it’s not like I can handle turning into a blubbering hot mess when I watch kitten videos all the time like I did last night.

What?

Awe, they were so cute.

(Spoken in my best manly voice)

Hot d*amn, they had some excellent looking puppies on there as well. They ought to grow up to be some d*mn fine huntin’ dawgs.

I know, I’m about as jacked up as body could be.

And I’m loving every minute of it.

Has anybody got a tissue?

Thanks for Listening

P.G.

Let’s keep in touch: paul@pgbarnett.com

© P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.