Many times, we hear quotes like "When at a conflict between the Mind and the Heart, always follow the Heart". My topic here is to discuss the following things (not in this order):
1) Do we really have something called Heart? May not be in the physical sense of it, but logically?.
2) Why Mind is considered to be bad when compared to Heart?
3) Assuming we have a Heart, should we (always) listen to it (or at all)?
We typically hear something like "My bad! I should have followed my Heart! Now, I am here neither I want to go back nor I am able to continue further". We hear these kind of arguments mainly when people fail after taking a decision. Most of the times, these comments are made in retrospect, and irrespective of the other choice which was neglected they think that it would have been their Heart's choice.
So what exactly is Heart? Heart is loosely dubbed as the thing which instructs about what-we-want-to-do?. Whereas Mind is something which says what-is-practical. Heart's instructions are mainly based on loose ideas which are programmed due to an influence by the various relations we have in our life or baseless emotions. While Mind is practical, it things about all the pros and cons about the situation and takes a right decision. The question of Mind Vs Heart comes up when people are not able to coup with their current situation.
Assuming that there is a child who has lot of interest in Cricket but doesn't have the required talent to go and play it. In this case, should he stupidly make a decision to leave his studies and play Cricket? Heart is foolish and stupid. It doesn't understand what you can do. Most of the times, even when people follow the so-called Heart, they don't understand the consequence of their decisions and consequently regret their own decision. Because if you go in either direction, problems are inevitable. People who can't stand up for these problems, often point out saying that I should have listened to my Heart or my Mind. We don't hear these arguments of Mind Vs Heart from people who are determined and take the responsibility of their actions.
Usually Mind Vs Heart comes up when people are either indecisive or they failed after taking a decision. It may not be a failure but they are not happy about their decisions. Life is all about taking a taking a set of decisions and living up-to your decisions.If you are not able to live about your decisions, then you would start blaming the Heart or the Mind.
Many times people confuse emotions with Heart. When you are angry, if you show anger (unnecessarily) then you are not following your Heart, you are being stupid. You are not able to control your emotions. Mostly in movies (like Upendra's movies) we see this kind of attitude.
[Another blog on emotional decision Vs logical decision]
We hear people saying that "I love you with all my Heart". Heart is only an organ which supplies blood, how can you love with all the Heart and not with liver (like the joke in EVV movies)?. Then what do we mean in this context?. All we mean is "You are occupied in my Mind".
Heart is again loosely connected to social service, kindness etc. And this is mainly because of the social conditioning. [Social conditioning tells us that growing rich is not good, because a rich house wont have love; poor hut has :P. But we do the opposite.]. When it comes to practicality, we realize that we don't have the Heart which is portrayed so beautifully in books/movies. What we do is, we apply our own logic to these situations and act according to them. So, we don't really care about so-called Heart in this situations and many other situations.
In other words, Heart is just a word, usually used for literary purpose but in all existence there is only Mind and you better listen to it. Don't get carried away by an illusionary, emotional, indecisive, social-programmed Heart.Follow your mind.
I have only my Mind and I always listen to it. What about you? Do you have a (logical) Heart?
I think all are aware of this fact, nothing to debate/explain here. When someone says "Dil to pagal hai" no one takes it literally. Some sentences literally are different than what they mean. And there's nothing wrong to use them in a group who can understand it in a non-literal sense.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: There is no debate between you and me. But I am sure there will be people who would disagree.
ReplyDeleteIt's simple. When you take a decision with Mind, your frame of reference is only you.
ReplyDeleteWhen you take a decision with Heart, you consider people around you.
Mind and Heart are in separable. In both the cases, you have to think to take a decision.
So, in the right sense, when you take a decision with Heart, you are broadening your perspective which can produece wonderful results when rightly done.
Of course, when people say, think with heart, it can mean hundred odd things. It can also mean, while I sit back and relax, give me your hard earned money :)
All said, I believe 5 % of us think to make decisions and we only think about 5 % of the decisions that we make :)
Emotions are not bad as they are potrayed. If you know how to use them, they are powerful.
Being emotional while thinking might not help us make right decisions. But use emotions to drive action, and it will bring wonders. Emotion is highly useful connection mechanism. You can connect to people with emotions (You can appeal to logic but you can only appeal to logical people, go with emotions and you have large audience including the logical people). And great leaders evoke extremely powerful emotions which can last for years. I will save more for your next thread on thinking.