One is always in a dilemma whether one should listen to your heart or to your mind.  Heart rules your mind or mind rules your heart.  All of us go through this in our every day life.  While logic is analysed by the mind, the feelings and emotions are gauged by the heart.  Let us look at different life situations and  review as to what guides our decisions – mind or heart .

Our academic inputs guide us to gather data, analyse them and look at alternatives before you take a decision.  This means that we are taught to be guided by our intellect.  However, in real life what happens ?  If we are to buy clothes for ourselves for a festival, what do we do ?  Do we look at our resources – say money and the time available and then look at options of where to buy and what to buy and then go ahead and buy clothes.  I am not sure.  Most of us will go to a nearby market of our choice and buy clothes which make us feel better.   

Let us take another example.  If we have to buy a car, what do we do ?  We do first define our needs.  Then, we explore the options and  examine our financial capacity.  We go to a dealer and choose a car based on all this analysis.  However, as we reach the dealership, we may end up choosing a car and a colour, which our heart dictates although it may be a bit beyond our original plan and budget. We may end up changing our decision at the last minute.

Now, let us look at our choosing our life partner.  What do we do ?  There could be two options.  One is that we are choosing our own partner and then inform our parents about it.  Alternatively, our parents choose our partner and we finally agree to it.  In either case, do we gather data, analyse options and then finally choose our partner.  I am not sure.  I think in most cases, the heart rules the mind.

There comes the interesting debate of whether heart rules the mind or vice versa.  I recently read an article that all our decisions are made by gut and then we apply logic to justify it.  This may be true.  But, according to scientists it is also true that we gather data all through our life and it is stored in our brains.  So, when we claim that we take most of our decisions by our gut, these are decisions taken by us using the data stored in the brain of ours.  Our mind analyses the data in seconds and passes it on to our heart to guide our decisions.

Like in the picture above, your heart may want you to drench your feet in the water and mind may say no because of high tides ?  What will you do ?

So, for me, it is always by the gut.  How about you ?

S Ramesh Shankar