Heart First

Jesus said to them, “Why do you tremble? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts?”

• Luke 24:38

“Follow your heart” is advice that often arises at pivotal points in one’s life. Yet, presumably, as one moves through life one gains wisdom, in the form of experiences, lessons, mental models, and more, which ought to prepare and improve one’s ability to reason and make decisions. Yet when facing an important decision, such as a school choice or a mate or a career, the best counsel we receive is to disregard the very faculty we have been developing and instead trust our instinct, our heart. This may follow of the heels of a pro/con list or some other mental exercise, but the final say, we could infer, is better removed from the mind and entrusted to the heart.

The greatest works of man are often said to be works of inspiration. That inspiration may take many forms, a dream image, a sensory remembrance, a random idea, and may take great subsequent effort to fully realize. But the awareness that thought and reason alone are insufficient to create great art is deeply ingrained. Further, we have a distrust of works that lack a hint of the divine and of people who exhibit only the calculation of thought.

We have a fundamental distrust of the mind for it is also the seat of the ego. We suspect ulterior motives and calculations, for we engage in the same. Sadly, we spend our lives developing mental faculties that merely obscure our innate wisdom. In each of us, our heart preceded our brain and it is increasingly accepted that the brain takes direction from the heart. Yet we organize our life and our world based on reason and logic.

How might one’s life change by simply turning first to the heart? How might society change?