Between the Head and the Heart

There are no two ways about consequences that you do not cause. What’s handed out is what you get and what’s taken away is gone: you simply just have to live with it. It may not be preferred but it is, at the very least, a simple, guiltless conclusion. I would favour that every single time over inflicting myself with the torment of settling a dilemma of the cruelest nature – one that necessitates a choice between heeding to the caution of the head and pursuing the will of the heart – and then endlessly appraising its outcome in retrospection.

I greatly envy those who have it in them to relentlessly follow their heart without giving ‘logic’ a chance. And a large part of that envy is because of the way good fortune agrees with them. Equally frustrating is how some people can actually get their hearts to agree with decisions that they made without its vote. And then there is the third breed (to which I belong): people who constantly engage in the battle of the head and the heart. How does one choose between experience and aspiration? Or common sense and desire? Does one go by conditioning or instinct? Be ‘real’ or chase your dreams? It kills me everyday. Is a pessimist an optimist with experience or just a grumpy, failed man?

It happens at the store. Do you buy that shirt because you have always wanted to wear that colour or that other one because that is the kind you are expected to wear at the workplace?

It happens after graduation. Do you take that job that pays seventy thousand rupees a month with weekends off or do you grow a beard and set off to make those documentary films on stories you believe in?

It happens again. Do you marry that incredibly charming small-time singer who still makes you skip a heartbeat or that successful, boring businessman who can afford the best wine and vacations?

And again and again… every single day. There isn’t a dilemma when something pleases your heart as well as makes common sense. You’d do it ninety nine out of hundred times. And regret not doing it that single time you chose to do otherwise. Likewise, you’d lament going ahead with something that you neither desired to do nor could justify as sensible. In both situations, you clearly ought to have done or refrained from doing something. But it is when the strings of your heart and the cords of your brain drag you in opposite directions that you are tested.

On some level though, I do believe that life would possibly lose its charm if it weren’t for these distressing dilemmas. There is something about the agony and anguish that makes you feel alive. A perfectly content man who does not have any creases on his forehead is almost uninteresting. The state of being uneasy and disturbed contributes so much to the beauty of human existence.

And along the way, we slowly realise that it is neither our head nor our heart that has all the answers. They perhaps lie just somewhere in between.