We see it everywhere we turn. Hearts, love and romance. Books, movies, television and our everyday interactions with others, in some way are shaped by the interactions we share with others. So, is it safe and wise to follow your heart? Paul Mark Sutherland wrote a piece that has been of comfort to many, saying:
Listen to your heart, it harbors sacred things.
Give from your heart, for abundance it brings.
Pray from your heart, for guidance when you need,
And follow your heart, for it knows how to lead.
Here, he asks, or tells us to trust our hearts, and yet, often cruelly, we are betrayed by the very feelings that we take as our hearts giving us direction.
Even the practical, pragmatic businessman Steve Jobs was swayed by his heart, and advised us that in doing so we are demonstrating an enormous amount of courage. “Have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition,” he said, “They somehow know what you want to become.”
This from the most successful businessman the world has ever known, and maybe he recognised too, that we all have an ongoing debate-cum-battle between our intellect and our passion, what we know and what we feel, so perhaps we should just trust.
Psychologist Dr Nikki Martinez says that the value in following your heart is that you will have fewer regrets, and that the advice you are taking is your own, with nobody else to blame. The other key aspect of the same decisions is that you will not spend a lot of time asking yourself, “What if?” I guess too, that trusting your own decisions ensures that you are evaluating, and valuing yourself constantly, and consistently, which must be a good thing, right?
In “The Greatest Love of All,” the tragically taken Whitney Houston sang that love, “is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself, is the greatest love, of all.” For many, most of us, it is a lack of self-esteem, or confidence, that causes doubt, that most insidious of feelings that can so easily become a characteristic, or trait, and part of what others see in us, and it can affect our ability to function in all spheres of our lives. I say we should love ourselves a bit more, believe that we are good and we may become great, but if we believe we are anything less, it will not matter what we become, for we will be shaped by those around us.
We love ourselves because we should, and even must, while the other side of the coin is that we don’t know why we love others. Of course, we love families because there is that historic, hereditary link, and societies that tell us we should and must. Fine. But what gives our societies the right to tell us who we can love and who not to?
History is replete with the wreckage of the ‘star-crossed lovers,’ of the Catholic and Protestant conflicts of the Irish tragedies, of Kings and Queens of Europe denied love by their family alliances and allegiances, and the well-chronicled black and white inter-racial disputes of Africa and America of fifty years ago.
Isn’t it fantastic that we have moved on? Isn’t it a welcome reflection on our ability to trust our young people? Isn’t it a sign of getting past our own insecurities? Isn’t it wonderful that we can accept others for who and what they are without loading them with our prejudices and ‘baggage?’ Isn’t it time to show the love, by letting them recognise the call of their heart?
Let them fall in love not just once, but every day of their lives, and cherish your part in it, no questions asked.
Ray Petersen
petersen_ray@hotmail.com
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