Follow Your Heart
'Follow your Heart' could be the worst advice you'll ever hear.
From time to time you may hear the advice ‘Follow your heart.’ It may come from well-meaning friends, motivational speeches, song lyrics, or self-help books, but it could be the worst advice that you ever receive.
We’re not being asked to follow the thumping, pumping heart of course; we're meant to follow our heart-felt feelings - but what are these feelings? Are they the selfish and short-term desires of our personality? Are they a form of prejudice? Are they an intuition? How do we separate heart-felt feelings from other feelings and notions? Presuming that we can separate them, then how good is the advice our ‘heart’ gives? And importantly, why should we follow our heart and ignore our other faculties?
I've been in love and I've been heart-broken and I've experienced some of that in my torso, but I don't think that love is localized in any way. I'm inclined to think that what we call 'feelings of the 'heart' are generally of a personal and fallible nature, and that our heart could therefore be a terrible organ to entrust our future.
It’s not uncommon for people to leave their partner at some point in a relationship - for a whirlwind romance, or to replace them with a younger and temporarily more exciting model - a decision made, presumably, by following their heart. But how good is that advice, and how would they know if it’s their heart - whatever we mean by that - that’s compelling them anyway? Perhaps it’s their vanity or self-importance, their insecurity, or simply their lust.
So can we differentiate our heart-felt feelings from other feelings? Perhaps, with time, because time brings objectivity and objectivity brings clarity. But in the swirl of emotion, when we are most in need of direction, when the decision has to be made, the answer is probably: no.
Our metaphorical heart is an instrument of feeling. It feels emotions such as love, admiration, respect, dread, and hurt. But when it feels these things it often gets carried away. Give it an emotional high and it can become giddy; give it choice and it can become paralysed; give it flattery and it can become silly; give it pain and who knows what it will do - because it might just love the attention and drama. So why would we want to entrust our life and happiness to such a flighty organ? Its job is to feel; it's not a decision-making tool.
If you follow your heart in matters of love, without listening to your head, it will lead you to disaster. Imagine that your lover of some years commits suicide, and you’re heart-broken and disabled beyond words. Your heart says ‘Take your own life so you can be with him.’ It’s a natural thing for the grief-stricken and heart-broken to feel, but it’s a terrible course of action. Follow your heart when it says ‘marry this person’, ‘jump off this bridge’, or ‘burn down the cheating bastard’s house’ - without consulting your head - and you will probably regret it.
I know that some people use the words 'follow your heart' to mean ‘follow your innate moral compass’, or ‘follow your intuition’, and if so I wish that they’d express themselves more clearly. I also know that some people will deride my lack of romanticism, but I just don’t want people to make terrible mistakes. We’ve been given a brain for a purpose, and there’s probably something symbolic in the fact that it’s placed higher than our heart.
But I don’t want to stomp on the heart. I'm advocating balance. I think that if we only use our heart we will end up giddy and dumb, and if we only use our head we will end up cold and despotic.