WTF.uzz

Oh My God! I am not sure how many times mind & heart have confronted. And, I can bet I am not the only one with this kind of internal stampede of beats on brain. No matter how much practical personality you think of yourself, you end up in innumerous situations where you are opinionated – Feeling it (Heart) vs. Knowing it (Mind). But what actually is thinking from heart means? Can heart really think? Absolutely no! But what is it then? It’s nothing but the excess of emotions in a decision, fighting against the knowledge based opinions  popping in your brain. Deep inside, you always know which is good for you, but sometimes you want to give it a try so as you can satisfy your curiosity and sometimes its just a risk taking urge in you. But the sub-consciousness can’t be defeated and scientists are still struggling to define it.

Lets get straight to the point – What to do? If I chose Heart, can I still boast me as a strong person or a will that make me a weak soul who agreed to kneel down in front of an emotional outbreak? I would say: ‘man-o-man stop thinking and just do it’. And, do it with your full will. Decisions ruled by heart always make it easier to convince your own self in all pros/cons. Emotions are long lived as compared to knowledge. A flaw in a mindful decision can easily be forgotten, than a fallacy in over-ruling a heart. One may be a feeble flaw but the later can result in an anticipated fiasco. Heart finds you the right way to drive your mind on a correct path. And, yet after the things are done, credit goes to mind, the conscious being in you. Usually society has a thumb rule – Professional life should be mindful, and personal life should be ruled by heart. Is it a valid fact – NO! The basic reason I would say is – Love your work for that will earn you a living, love your life, for that will earn you a reason to complete it rather leaving in between. But love is important which in no ways can be decided or dealt on the table of knowledge! If love could be decided through knowledge, it would have been much easier to do, but less magical to feel.

I have felt a strange thing between heart and mind – emotional decisions know no boundaries, and can go limitless wherein mindful processes are confined to your previous limits of righteous deeds or till the scope of your last mistake. You seldom dare to cross that line, and even if you cross, deep inside it’s your heart pushing it against the mindful disagreement to steer it. With Intellectual and Emotional flows to control the deeds, I would say someone with intellectual mindset will be searching for answers, facts and correctness wherein the one ruling with emotional energy will search for belief, relief in the ways that feels right! The heart feels the facts, and mind rationalizes the reasons. Its rightly said – "The heart is like an ocean, unstable and uncertain… And the mind is like the sand, bold and confident"

Heart is confused, yet comprehensible. The mind calms the heart, guides it to be serene and balanced for equanimity is what mind strives to thrive!. Different situations have unprecedented effects over us. If someone is suffering, its no time to be correct and rational, rather high time to listen, empathize and share things to comfort the disturbed soul. Emotional wrenches can’t be handled with intellectual algorithms or guidelines. Healing a heart comes first before hammering the head! I have felt that in any time, you can not convince your mind until unless your heart approves it. The life of any decision is very small if deep inside your heart is denying it’s existence & importance. Mind can take quick decisions on facts, but its the heart that sustains it.

If one fine day, a decision well accepted by your intellects fails on the benchmarks of heart, your sub consciousness will throw you 100 reasons to wipe it today or tomorrow. There are always conflicts between a hope governed by heart, and stats/probability calculated by brain. Hope can break rock into pebbles, and mind can convince rock to be mountain. With a simple thing I was discussing with my friend Anna, that ‘90% of friends are there only to share a smile, 10% to share even your tears! Irony is, knowing it all, 90% of time you spend with the former, and 10% with the later.’ We stay friends with people we only ‘kind of like’. We do and say things to fit in & seem/look cool that may even go against what we feel is right in our hearts!

Think of a normal life. What is it? We end up living 1/3 of our lives in a cubicle for the ‘benefits’ to reap. Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. Life is a mixture of decisions ruled by heart as well as mind & if something goes wrong it’s hard to blame one! The questions start popping out. Is my heart at fault? Are my feelings just silly and frivolous? Or maybe it’s my mind to be blamed? It seems like it’s always coming up with conflicting messages anyway. You live your day, welcome tomorrow, or in occasionally wait for a special day. According to your heart the distance of a given day from today is directly proportional to the desirability of events on that day wherein to mind its number of earth’s rotation and will take the fixed time irrespective to the occasion.

heart vs. mind Now, an important factor regulating our decisions and choices is the culture, social surroundings or society. Man is a social animal, and no matter how independent he thinks, he is a part of a herd. And, has to abide by the traditions, culture of its respective society. This conditioning may cover up the true self, and obscure the inside messages with the trends crafted to be followed and thoughts meant to be mended. The result is – even if you really feel like that’s the right choice, how do you know for sure? How do you know it’s not just what you think you should do? But, a basic question returns us to ground zero – From where this problem kicks off and why mind and heart can’t be in sync? Someone once mentioned:

You can be the most powerful person just following 3 simple rules:

    * Say what you think.
    * Do what you say.
    * Accept what you do.

Bruce Lee once said "The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity."

Though mind and heart are different then, why interfering in same roles? What’s their purpose of existence? Is it so confusing? Have we really mistaken their purpose? In terms of philosophy, heart is like a compass with a purpose to guide the directions we take, with a hawk eye view on ‘here we are’ and ‘here we need to go’. It sees and weighs your complete life! Mind on the other hand, is not supposed to ponder on your complete life, rather its job is logical comparisons, organize, conceptualize the information gathered. It’s like sewing the bits of information to form some comprehensive knowledge bed on which decision can be laid. Our mind, for sure, is not designed to make purpose driven decisions. Flipping a coin, and a mind can only decide the outcome based on facts & stats and on taking a good look on both sides of the coin.

With an analogy of a courtroom, the heart is the judge sitting on top, deciding what’s right. And mind would surely be the defendant, as well as prosecutor. The problem arises, when mind gets greedy to play the role of prosecutor, defense as well as the judge. The mind should never be the judge for it’s job is to sort things, compare information, contrast granularities and to publish & present it to heart – do what you want with this! But can we control this, even though I would say – Yes, you can! but to control it, is one of the hardest things to do. You should have a strong heart and a strong will. To me, will power is a thin thread that binds mind and heart to keep it in sync. If that thread is powerful, you can take your mind on the rules of heart. Its like pulling the reins when mind goes nuts! Pulling it, when mind is making choices. The worse is when mind is at work on the occasions it is least needed. Comparing and contrasting the differences, brooding mostly. How many times have you noticed the unnecessary work of mind? Enjoying a walk/jog, admiring a sunset, kissing, crying, laughing, missing someone and your mind is still thinking and going. Is it needed at that time? No! In simple terms your mind is proving to be a hurdle in your experiences!

Any Solution?
Will power as I mentioned before is a very important thread to be kept tight and never let lose! Until unless your heart & mind are friends rather than conflicting foes, will power should be pulled strong enough to keep them aligned. Trying to tell mind that it’s not needed will eventually increase its work load on the reasons why it’s not needed, and how to keep its stand firm. This will encourage it to work more. So, instead of a retreat we will get a resurgence! Rather telling it loud, decide on believing in you, and your power to take decisions, enjoy experiences keeping your mind at bay to relax. Try to constantly realign your decisions to be ‘with your-own-selves’. When taking a decision, think it’s right or wrong – Is this choice going in my favor, or against? And, you will find the right choice popping its way out evidently. You can make your heart and mind bind together in a knot, and their offspring (you) won’t have an emotional overflow & flood damage from the divorce it’s have been suffering since long.

- Rishi

PS: This is just an attempt to vocabularize what’s in my heart to the words I have it in mind. So, few feelings framed in fumbling words.
Do leave your comments.