I am a feeler, not a thinker. Owning this has proven to be quite the challenge. My wonderful husband has had his head removed so many times for daring to suggest this very fact, or for implying that I'm reacting with emotion, not thought. It's made me so, so, so angry to hear this, I think mainly for the fact that it implied to me that I didn't ever think, that that was a function I did not have.
In college I prided myself on being part of an intellectual crowd. I wasn't in the heart of it, but I was someone people came to for help with writing a paper, or to discuss a new text we were reading for class. I liked that role, and enjoyed the creative and stimulating people I chose to make my circle of friends. However, after college, when I truly set out to find myself, as all great American youth do, I stopped thinking. Or at least, I stopped believing that thinking was getting me anywhere. Dateless and desperate were two defining characteristics during my thinking phase, and I didn't want to get anywhere near those two in my search. I found that not thinking, going with the flow and heavy drinking were the keys to my success. The wonderful thing is that those three things got me to a bar in Lancaster, PA where I met Ed. The problem is that, because he's my life partner, I ended up sticking with those things for far too long. The drinking was the first to go, not that I don't still enjoy a tipple, just that I'm a mom now and old and hangovers are hard work! My point is that because my non-thinking ways were in place when I met Ed, I carried them with me, assuming that they were part of my new life - a wonderful life that had love all over it. I think that somewhere, on some level, I believed that thinking again would only spell doom and gloom for my happiness.
Irony is grand and Ed turned out to be a man who enjoys a good time, but enjoys a good conversation/debate more. He likes it when I think, and encourages me to do it often. In fact, he gets really mad when I don't. Which is where the feeler in me gets crazy. See, when I hear anything, I react with my heart, not my head. And that's awesome sometimes, but a real bitch other times. When you feel everything you hear, it can lead to a lot of drama - we're talking Bravo levels of the stuff. So I have to remember to use that thinking part of my self when I'm processing information, be it from a book, a colleague or a conversation. But I must always remember that I feel first and think second...and that's ok.
That was a big chunk of text - thanks to those of you who stuck with it!
