Because we Feel

Walking in thin ice...

We get educated, through school, through others, we learn to copy letters, words, sentences, whole texts! and by the time you're an adult we're really good at copying. Yes, that's what we're get good at: copying what others have done and have been doing ever since.

We also learn to think for ourselves, but that's "basic" instinct. That's the brain acting smart in order to protect its integrity, its sanity.

To be sane in a not very logic world it's a challenge that most of us, no matter how wealthy, which ethnicity or detected craziness, have a hard time to deal with it. We can be very smart, but there's always this sensation that we might be standing over a thin layer of ice that could break and we would easily drown in Lalaland, the land where emotions rule and logic works as a cubist painting: gives some shape, but ultimately it only messes things up.

Passionate people have fortunately spoke out loud about their convictions on the emotional world. Be it Damasio who made the connection between emotional world and physiology,  Cury who manages to see it through what makes the brilliant mind so brilliant, or Servan-Schreider  who through another scientific perspective brings light to what Neurology has been finding about our brain: that part of it is animal and the other a direct result of evolution in itself.

We're this grey mass, that speaks through a body, that collects impressions, but most importantly, that feels.

Some people try their best to hide their feelings away, to be more like machines, paying high prices for their mistakes for they're not allowed to be careless. But, even them, at some point, get caught by a feeling of inadequacy, and the beautiful castle of cards just falls into randomness again.

No one is 100% logic. We are humans, and as the words indicates, we're resilient but permeable, we're sympathetic and solidaric but individualistic, we're sensitive, but we choose in favour of self-sufficiency, self-living. And this sounds like a balanced way of responding to life's questions and challenges, but then we go too far and suddenly we are harassed by anxiety, by too much honesty, by angriness.

So we must think about things, but we must be the guards of how much thinking we're doing. As said by the great Master, "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." Einstein.

So, the continuum big question is, how do we connect the Heart to the thinking machine, aka, Brain? In some situations we get the perfect combination, Heart and Mind are in tune, but what makes that perfect combination?

"Each experience has its own velocity according to which it wants to be lived if it is to be new, profound, and fruitful. To have wisdom means to discover this velocity in each individual case."
_
Rilke

We make the experiences, the experiences make us. We choose and are chosen. We think and we shut down. Caught between a birth and a death, we try to be normal and live a Life that is recognized as honest and respectful. Inside ourselves we give it meaning, we tell the story that will most appease our dreams and fears, for one is the other side of another. So we connect our Heart to our Brain through meaning, so how do we get the sense of meaning?
Through strong connections, through full relationships.

Physically we connect to existence through taste, smell, touch, listening, looking...
Emotionally we connect through Love. When we look at each other in the eye and feel our hearts beating, we answer most of our existential questions. Intimate relationships anchors us firmly in our existence. We don’t question the meaning of life when we're engaged in meaningful and loving actions... closeness give us meaning.

It can be hard to trust in one another, so much of ourselves is offered through intimacy, but... "The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things." - Rilke, and through that process of living and learning, we get wiser on what speed, rhythm, colors or language does our Heart speak softly to our brain and our brain responds to our Heart.