The Mind, Heart, and Love

We have a mind. The mind is where logic makes a home. We have a heart. The heart is where emotion makes a home. And we have love, where mind and heart mingle. Throughout history the mind and heart have struggled to accommodate each other.  And this struggle is profoundly joined in matters of love. Wise men do comment on this struggle so vexing to us all:

‍* Emotion and logic make strange bedfellows. Anonymous

‍* ‍ The heart is wiser than the intellect. Josiah Gilbert Holland

‍* ‍ Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.  Albert Einstein

*‍ If your heart’s attached to it, then your mind will be attached to it. Vera Wang

‍* In art as in love, instinct is enough.  Anatole France

*‍ For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet.  Plato

‍* ‍ No amount of skillful invention can replace the element of imagination. Edward Hopper

We are in a constant war between intellect and emotion. Our mind tells us what is right and good based on analysis and reason, and our emotions free us from logic and consequence. Do what you feel. Ignore consequence and follow your heart – or your pride, or your passion, or your self-serving desires. But who can tell us what path to choose or what compromise we can make? Does my religion, my unperfected belief in God, my secular ethic or my inborn sense of what is right and wrong – conscience - guide me?  We are at a loss.

‍Decisions have consequences. Words, the script of thought, have meaning. Logic and experience tell me so. Emotions follow no rules. Emotions do pull me away from what my mind tells me. Should I risk the consequences that mind tells me will result when emotion pulls me from the “right” path that mind counsels?  But we do so long for the pleasures that emotion’s siren call promises. 

‍ Is there a reward for doing the “right” thing? But who or what tells us what is the right thing? Is it my conscience that could be the result of indoctrination by well-meaning but flawed people? Is it the Natural Law that could be the unerring foundation of human nature? Is it God speaking to me? Is it simply a charitable desire not to hurt the other?

‍ I don’t have an answer. Yet we need an answer. Our future pursuits and a firm determination of who we are and what we pursue demand an answer. Could eternity be a beacon?

‍Love - ‍ Before going deeper into love’s struggle between mind and heart, let’s look at some thoughts of love by some who have struggled:

*‍  Love is free; it is not practiced as a way of achieving another end. Pope Benedict XVI

‍* I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours forever. Anonymous

‍* If grass can grow through concrete, love can find you at any time in your life. Cher

*‍ Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning, a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep burning and unquenchable. Bruce Lee

‍* You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free. Thich Nhat Hanh

‍* I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Charles Dickens, “Great Expectations”

*‍  One of the best feelings in the world is knowing that your presence and absence both mean something to someone. Anonymous

‍* Being listened to is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable. David Augsburger

‍* You don’t meet the people you love, you recognize them. Anna Gavalda

‍* When love beckons, follow it, though the ways are hard and steep. Kahlil Gibran

*‍ Tenderness is the most modest form of love. Olga Tokarczuk

‍* On Love’s spectrum, Eros is wanting everything, Agape is giving everything. Anonymous

‍* I wish I could show you when you are lonely, anxious, or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being. Anonymous

‍* The choice to love is the choice to connect – to find ourselves in the other. Anonymous

‍* The most precious gift you can give someone is the gift of your time and attention. Anonymous

‍* That till I loved I never lived. Emily Dickinson

*‍ My heart is unlimited in the amount of love, but is limited in the passion and commitment. Dominique Levy

‍* Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning, a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep burning and unquenchable. Bruce Lee

‍* ‍The choice to love is the choice to connect – to find ourselves in the other. Bell Hooks

‍* It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

‍* You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. Sherwood Anderson

‍What is the process that causes our senses to come alive and love to bloom? Is it even worth asking or should we just enjoy that feeling, that thril? Sometimes simple closeness, proximity, initiates the same feelings. We’ve all felt it. You draw close to an attractive woman, maybe to whisper in her ear, maybe to help with her jacket. The closer you get the more something moves or flows in your body. Your mind and emotions are drawn to the moment. Something is going on. You haven’t yet touched this attractive other but you want to. This is action at a distance. What is the medium that transfers this emotion laden signal from her to you and hopefully from you to her? And what will it lead to? Love?

‍Love’s Labor Lost - There comes a time when love’s labor is lost, when the bloom leaves the rose, when you don’t bring her flowers anymore. And the saddest of all is when love’s all-consuming desire is not returned. Many have spoken of this.  

*‍ ‍You are now in the past, still in memory but out of mind. Anonymous

*‍ ‍Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. Anonymous

*‍ ‍Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. Kahlil Gibran

‍* Love is not possession. Love is letting your loved ones follow their own paths, even if those paths lead away from you. Chris Kylie

*‍ Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind. James Baldwin

*‍ Someday, love will find you, break those chains that bind you.One night will remind you how we touched and went our separate ways. Journey, 1983

‍* We are all afraid to say too much, to feel too deeply, to let people know what they mean to us. Bianca Sparacina

*‍ Poetry hints at what could be, urges remembrance of what was, and haunts us with what could have been. Anonymous

‍* False though she be to me, I’ll ne’er pursue revenge. For still the charmer I approve, though I deplore her change. In hours of bliss we oft have met, they could not always last. And though the present I regret, I’m grateful for the past. William Congreve, “False Though She Be”

*‍ Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Tennyson

*‍ The saddest words of mouth and pen surely are “What might have been” Anonymous

‍Logic and emotions do make strange bedfellows. Pure logic, objective reality, actual experience leads to the truth of things. Move on. It’s over. But emotional acceptance is yet another matter. Can I just blot out vibrant memories and longings? Can I blot out those little signs, imagined or not, that she could accept more than just friends? Hope does spring eternal. It is emotion’s last grasp of what could be. And longing? A sure sign that emotion still breaks through logic’s protective barrier.

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