Trust your heart guiding you to do

I asked my dad one time in young age, "Are you a mind person or heart person?" Without hesitation he replied, "Heart." So I asked, "Do you regret it?" To which he replied laughing. "Everyday." Then I asked "What would you advise me to do then?" "Still your heart. People who use their mind too much, they're too calculating. It sucks the joy right outta them. But when you follow your heart, you might regret it, but life is worth more in the end." Of course he added in the end, balance is the best. But if he had to choose, he leaned more to the heart.

So yes, I trust my heart. What it wants may not always be the 'road less taken' or the 'mainstream choices' but it's completely my own. And that's what matters. On almost all big things in my life, I have trusted my heart, sometimes against strong opposition from either others or my own brain. Not everything worked out perfectly, but that is normally the case. I have never regretted following my heart. But, when I think back on earlier times, in cases where I did not follow my heart, I wonder what might have been. To me, that is worse than having followed my heart and ended up somewhere unanticipated. Here are some examples where I followed my heart and things did not always go well, but where not following my heart would have been truly worse.

Here is an example where I did not follow my heart: In college I entered a social program that was "safe" from an earnings perspective and content, and all what I was really interested in. As a result, I have spent 40 years in a career that I never want to stop working as I always enjoy what my heart wants. Most of my wake time spent doing something constructive and doing it well like writing posts, articles and blogs and of course reading at bed time continues. Well it depends you should always follow your mind but there are time where your heart becomes clear but if this is a technical question what you conside your heart you know telling what is right its actually technically your brain which is basically the physical part of the mind so technical your heart is just your mind meaning if you trust your mind you also trust your heart.

I have followed my heart in most decisions regarding relationships. It's gotten me to have some extraordinary life experiences but also some harsh lessons. While I do not regret anything, I will say that there has to be a mutual collaboration between the heart and mind (obviously). I tend to be very Zen and open to the universe and already understand that people are not ours to keep and a shared experience is worth the heartache. Trust your heart, too many people forgot how to let it lead them.

If I push the imagery further, it’s the kingdom home of my inner child. It swarms with colorful feelings, it’s strung with desire and palpitating with wonderment. It’s also quite nagging, impulsive, and incredibly prone to bedazzlement. The child is very much there. I’m not sure it was ever told about the world around us and the strange dynamics in which it works. Furthermore, I’m not sure it would even listen at all if it were taught today. It was protected that way. It was kept naive that way. Decisions I’ve made with my heart have turned out to be absolute disasters, beyond what reason could understand.

Things I have given out from the heart have been met with mockery, contempt, indifference, cruelty, inconsideration, bafflement. It has given me plenty of occasions to stop trusting it at all. There have been times I despised my heart, ignored it, bad-mouthed it, malignantly provoked it, and wished it stopped. I’ve nurtured the illusion I could rely on my instincts alone, my reason alone, and regard anything that came from my heart as puerile nonsense. It did not turn out so well. However, with time, with experience, it has learned how to work with other parts of me, accept it is not the absolute master of all of me. It has learned patience and how to keep the feelings and desires burning, burning, burning, to better explode when the time comes. It has accepted to be tamed but never dominated.

It’s always clear about what it wants for us, it tries it’s best to shout out to us, so we understand what we feel. It wants so much to live, it wants to beat and burn, it’s connected to my survival instincts, so it never whispers something that’s not initially for our benefit, something that would deliberately hurt us. For it’s inadaptation to the world, for all my misinterpretations, it’s one of the things that’s just there, consistently. I trust my own heart. Sometimes, I mistrust the world around it. At times, feelings I’ve harboured in my heart, good and bad, have eaten away at my sanity with their intensity. Cheers!