“So I need to live in my heart?”
“No, it’s actually a balance – a partnership. To live your highest life, as best as I can tell, the trick is to have the heart and the mind working together in harmony. Some people live completely in their hearts – they’re pure emotion and feeling. These people have trouble operating in the real world, appearing as love-struck fools with poor judgement and no practical awareness. Other people live totally in their heads – they’re all reason and logic, leaving no room for intuition and passion to guide them, these individuals appear cold as stone!”
From the book
“The Saint, the surfer and the CEO”
By Robin Sharma
The statement above is a conversation between Jack, a student of life, and Moe, his guru teacher. Moe speaks of a balance that I believe is extremely important, the heart and the mind. I have been working to achieve my version of this balance in my own life. Sit tight as I share some of the lessons I have learnt in my journey.
Living in the heart to me feels like running through a field of wild flowers just because you saw it there. It feels freeing and adventurous. It has a degree of childishness, filled with smiles and distant giggles.
When I think of living in the head, it feels like a lot of thinking, heavy analysis. Always striving for the right choice. What comes to mind is an adult, and not just any adult. The one all the kids avoid because he’s always so strict and if anything goes wrong, brace for some lengthy scolding.
From this point of view, it may then seem like there’s no debate, we should always live in the heart! So we always feel the sun on our face, leaving all our worries and troubles behind us. Why then does the wise guru from the want us to strike a balance?
I’ll start with what I had mentioned earlier, however good it sounds, living entirely in the heart will have you living some romanticized version of life. Assuming no troubles and no worries, yet we know, if one thing is for certain, there will be trouble in this world.
So we need to find a balance between the wisdom of the heart and the intelligence of the mind. Live in a way that is wise yet kind, practical yet spontaneous, courageous yet caring, responsible yet passionate. That we may run across the flower field yet still consider there may be danger in the bushes, so we are cautious.
This may not be very easy for all of us, given that as we grow older, we are taught to calculate risks and seek to saner option. Which is great, because I can’t imagine sticking a bean in my nose at this age, things I did as a child. This, however, limits our experiences.
A few years ago, I got a job opportunity while still in school. Logic said I couldn’t have both, the course work was demanding. Passion said go for it, it was my dream job. I made a compromise and took a part time internship where I got to learn a lot about the position I later took on. The balance I struck helped me have enough time for school work, and graduated in time, luckily I also got to secure a position.
The balance doesn’t always mean you’re right, or you’ll always find a way to be fully accommodating to both sides. It just means you don’t stick to one path and miss out on all the goodness of the other. Balance begins when you forgive every mistake, figure out how to deal with your “flaws” and find a way to love yourself even in the most challenging situations.
I’d like to end with this, an American poet, Emily Dickinson, once said; “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” So go out and live a little, give yourself margin to live on the looser side of life every once in a while. Make some choices inspired only by your heart. And with time, you’ll figure out how to create that perfect balance.
A little reminder, you don’t have to wait for the balance to be perfect to enjoy it, make the mess work.
I’m so glad to have you as part of my audience. It’s an honor to share the lessons I’m learning as I try to be a better human being, to experience humanity as intended. Please leave a comment below so we can keep the conversation going. You could also reach out to me personally, all the info is on my about page. Have an amazing week, let’s meet here next week again!
Life in Colour 