The Heart Is Stoopeed

There's a cliched, old saying: "Follow your heart" which should not taken seriously. Why? Because the heart is stupid.

I say this because I'm a man who has followed his heart all his life, and my heart is stupid. My heart has always led me to places I shouldn't be, or people I shouldn't be with, or situations I shouldn't have to encounter. While my mind is sound (and my intuition is sharp), my heart always comes and screws things up. Why? Because I project.

Projection: how a person sees what he wants to see and feel instead of the facts and what is real.

My heart is the biggest and bestest magician in the world, and it fools me every single time. It twists the facts my mind has collected and the signals my intuition has received, and turns them into something irrational and complex and, often, wrong. Because the idealist in me sees what he wants to see, and his heart starts to make things up in his head. Messes it up. A becomes Z. Red becomes blue. And what's not there becomes a mirage, and what is there becomes a wisp of nothing. The heart fools, and by following my heart, fool becomes me.

And you know what is the greatest accomplice to the crazy heart? Expectations. With great expectations come great disappointments and disillusions. When the mind starts to analyze and criticize, the heart would insist on saying it is right, and the expectations are real and logical and reasonable and right because the heart is always right.

No, it's not.

Some days I wish I weren't so controlled and led by my heart, but instead of mind. I fail to listen to my intuition before I take the leap of faith based on what my heart tells me.

And that, my friend, is a dangerous habit.

You'd have thought that by now, I should have known better and graduated from this "follow my heart" nonsense. Instead, I find myself falling into that trap consistently. The heart is not only a great magician, it's also a dictator. Once it takes control, there's nothing to stop it except for, maybe, heavy sedation and a complete lobotomy.

Be still my heart. Better yet, go somewhere and disappear.