Your Heart’s Writing Checks Your Brain Can’t Cash

It doesn’t matter how much I date, how often I give advice, how long I stay in a relationship, or how many articles I write, I’ll never truly understand the heart. With everything we know about the human genome, the way our brain works, the synapses that send electrical pulses to control our bodily functions, how to cure countless diseases that affect the way we live, we still cannot understand our heart. Not the physical, blood pumping, left ventricular clogging, red blood cell creating heart (we understand that), but rather the heart that controls our emotions. The heart that lands on greeting cards everywhere, and dominates hundreds of sayings and speeches. This idea that one of our central life giving organs has become the international symbol for love is something I will never understand. Heartbreak? Heart throbbing? Heartless? Heartfelt thoughts? When you really think about it, it doesn’t make any sense.

           

            The heart runs shit though, and it’s amazing to watch all logic and clear thinking go straight out the window when the heart gets involved. We will follow our heart so far into something our mind is telling us not to get involved with. They are two very different organs, the heart and the brain, but yet any of these “heartfelt thoughts” that we feel come straight from our brain. The heart doesn’t think, it beats. What we feel when we follow our heart is a function of our mind. So when someone says to you, “Don’t think, just follow your heart.” What they’re really saying is: turn off your straight thinking, analytical mind, and use the part of your brain that is missing logic and accountability, but loves taking chances and listening to poetry.

            So then, what is this heart thing anyway? Well, it’s a figment of our imaginations. It’s a feeling that we cannot describe, understand or pinpoint, so we create the idea of an intelligent heart that will lead us in the right direction. And I believe that this figment is by far the most confusing part of dating and relationships that we will ever deal with.

            Love is synonymous with the heart. If someone you love doesn’t love you, you become heart broken. If you truly want to be with someone, your heart is his’ or her’s. If you really miss your love, your heart will be longing for them. Love is also just as intangible and confusing as this idea of a “heart.” But if our “heart” is just a function of our mind, why can’t we think clearly when love is involved?

            I was lounging around with one of my friends this past weekend. She’s kinda in a messy situation, one that I’m not necessarily sure she wanted me to find out about, but she was about as easy to read as our soon-to-hit-the-shelves book. We didn’t get too deep into her exact situation, I did not need to know what kind of problems she was having with her boyfriend, to me it didn’t matter. The fact was that there were problems.

            Financial problems, family problems, sexual problems, drinking problems, other men problems, work problems, living situation problems, they are all just problems.

            Although they were her personal problems, in the grand scheme of things, they’re no different than the next couple’s problems. I asked her to try and step out of her current position and to take a birds eye view of the relationship. From up there, things look a little bit clearer. When you’re eye to eye, on ground level with your relationship issues, your heart is doing the thinking for you. You don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. You don’t know what’s really best for you, and you can’t formulate a concise plan to change anything. You feel stuck or trapped in your own heart. It’s awful to be in a messy relationship, even if it’s only a little messy. Many times you don’t even realize that there’s anything wrong because you’ve been pushing all the little issues to the side, ignoring them like they’ll just disappear. They won’t disappear; they’ll build and build in the background like a storm, until it finally gains enough momentum and hits the land with enough steam to destroy everything. I like to call it Hurricane Baggage. Ignore the issues long enough and you might have a category five on your hands.

           

            My friend was following her heart. She loved him, with all her heart, and couldn’t picture a life without him. At least that’s what she kept telling me, over and over. The problem was, she was telling me this while lounging around the morning after spending the night with me...

            I was the scapegoat, the break from the monotony, the illusion of something not necessarily better, but different, the unknowing pawn in a dangerous game of her heart.

            Her heart would not let her mind see the real problem though. The problem wasn’t infidelity;


 The problem was something in her relationship, which lead her to that point where she was ok with the infidelity. 


She had been avoiding all the little issues for so long that it felt more comfortable to throw everything away and lay with another man rather than try and patch up every tiny hole in her own situation.

           

            Following your heart is romantic, but not practical, and if you want true, long lasting, healthy love, at some point you need to be practical. But following only your mind is practical without being romantic. If you want passionate, take your breath away, body tingling love, at some point you need to be romantic. In the end, it’s not about an either/or situation, because when you meet the right person, your heart and mind should be telling you the same thing.

WJNTY - SETH


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