Which do you follow, the head or the heart? I've a tendency to follow the heart - though this can often lead to deep difficulty and suffering. Do I follow the heart's wild camino or the head's safe, straight and narrow, everyday path? What if the latter is the correct and moral thing to do? Sometimes I think that life's greatest challenge is to find a symbiotic balance between the head and the heart, between reason and feeling, between logic and instinct.
head or heart
the heart says yes
the head says no
the head says stop
the heart says go
the heart acts
while the head reflects
the heart dreams
what the head rejects
the head speaks out
a warning word
the heart sings
like a soaring bird
the heart is fire
the head is ice
give me the heart
at any price?
12 comments:
Heart every time for me too Robert.
I think the trick is to use both. Your post get me humming one of the best songs by John Martyn. Thanks.
Good one. Like the question mark at the end.
Perhaps a few chords are in order?
By the way, Trio Gitan are playing in Grimsby Central Hall on Saturday night (7.30) - its probably a long way for you, but if you know anyone who lives round there feel free to tip them off! :)
This is one of life's perennial dilemmas. Romantic by nature, I'm always inclined to say "go with the heart, not the head." Experience, however, has led me to conclude that we need to listen to both the head and the heart. I like to think of it as a kind of "checks and balances" system, similar to the one we have in our type of government. The head insures that the heart and all of its random emotions do not have too much power, and the heart reciprocates by insuring that we are not enslaved by the head and the conditioning upon which it feeds.
Makes me think of this song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo8akuoi0eI
x
I think that life's greatest challenge is to find a symbiotic balance between the head and the heart, between reason and feeling, between logic and instinct.
Balance is key. Going with the head all the time can lead to a kind of brittleness and woodenness and to possible regrets about playing it too safe and missing out on possibilities.
But it's funny, the way the human brain seems to work, head and heart are so deeply intertwined. Reason and emotion overlap to a much greater degree than we think. (One of the reasons it's a struggle to be impartial and objective when we need to.) In our messy human minds I often wonder how much of our attempts at logic and reason are backed by emotion (like fear, or a need for order, or something like that.)
I think we should beware going with our feelings, they are not always our friends, two of our predominent feelings are fear and love and we need to be intelligent about them both ... we are all full of fears but we do need to face up to them, challenge our fears in order to live a full life ... and as for love ... well we know the trouble that can get us into ... falling into the madness of love negates the reality of discipline and commitment ... so I would say, against the general trend to be authentic and intuitve, that its the head that defines the man or woman !!!
Not an easy answer. Looking back, my head hasn't made as many good choices as my heart. Still, my gut tells me that the world would be much better off if the head were making the choices. I'm thinking now of the violence and hate driven politics from the heart following true believers around the world.
That's 1 vote for the heart, 2 for the head, 3 for both, and 2 side-skipping of the question, then.
The heart's having a bad day...
Hope you had a good audience, Dominic. I tipped off a few assorted trawler men, dockers and fish packers, so hope the audience wasn't too rowdy! Seriously though, we'll catch up with you one of these days soon...
I don't think the heart loses if we can find a way to do what you invoke in your sweet poem. If anything, calling on the mind to balance the heart is a way to protect the heart's voice from annihilation.
By the way, when I took the Myers-Briggs personality profile, in the feeling vs thinking portion I scored 50 to 0 on the feeling.
!
I have always felt the world more than seen it. When I first read "The heart's having a bad day" I thought, well yes, my heart often has a bad day! That's what comes from feeling the world! But I do think that with aging comes ways to cope, and even it out.
Yes, figuring a way to cope ... as one gets older ... still difficult, but perhaps one has learnt more strategies ...
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