The Head and Heart Game

Here is a neat lit­tle game for you to play today: See if your head and heart know each other. See if your heart knows what your head is think­ing or if your head knows what is in your heart. The way to start the game is to take any deci­sion in your life and fig­ure out all of the motives involved in it. Start with some­thing sim­ple — like the last time you bought a car. How much of the pur­chase was head and how much was heart?

On the sur­face, it looks like a sim­ple game, but it is not only com­plex; it is a jour­ney into your soul that is as intri­cate as a multi-leveled labyrinth. Head and heart blend together at some points and are some­times so sep­a­rate that you won­der if you are a stranger to your­self. Find­ing the bal­ance between head and heart is tricky. Hav­ing to endure a war between them can be torment.

Some deci­sions need to be made more with your head than your heart. This is espe­cially true if you have ever had to finance a car (which I quit doing many years ago). You are bet­ter at this as you get older. Prac­ti­cal­ity is a head thing. Your heart goes through stages. It will cause you to make some pretty fool­ish pur­chases early in life. The voices in your head sound too much like that of your par­ents’ when you are young, so you are prone to ignor­ing them.

In the game it is prob­a­bly eas­ier to know what you think rather than how you feel. The head is bad about run­ning over the heart. The heart is bad about betray­ing what you really want in life out of its own fears. The Cre­ator made us won­der­fully with checks and bal­ances. Head and heart can cre­ate some­thing as won­der­ful as Dis­ney­land or as hor­ri­ble as Auschwitz. (Theme parks and wars from the same people…go figure.)

In the never-ending con­tests of head and heart, the heart actu­ally has the upper-hand. It is greater. It has con­trol of the body in more ways than the head. It dis­agrees with an intel­lec­tual choice and calls the body to its side with a headache or a pit in your stom­ach. The heart is heard in more ways by the body than by some idea float­ing in your head.

There is a cer­tain res­o­nance that occurs when head and heart agree — when both have done their home­work and have come to the same deci­sion. What­ever that deci­sion, you now have the wit, wis­dom, and will to see it through to the end.