Rationalization vs Emotions

An age old space of conflict....the heart or the head

A close friend tells me "You never seem to have a conflict between your head and your heart, and that's why decision making is easy for you". I don't know how true.......it's not as much as there being no conflict, but rather to say, can we know ourselves well enough to accept what's in the heart and then align the head in the decision making.

In this context, this write up of Proust was interesting:

In The Captive & The Fugitive Marcel Proust, writes penetratingly on this paradox of how the intellect, in its coolly rational search for objectivity, blinds us to the larger truths of our emotional reality. In one particularly insightful passage, Proust channels through his protagonist, named after himself, universal insight into how our intellect blinds us to the wisdom of the heart and how pain, above all, strips down our intellectual defenses and puts us in raw, direct contact with the emotional truth of our being.

Shortly after the protagonist has completed a rigorous intellectual analysis of his feelings for his romantic partner, Albertine, and concluded that he no longer loves her, he receives news of her death. He is suddenly overcome by such uncontainable and uncontrollable sorrow that the truth — a truth his intellect had rejected but his heart encoded far more deeply — was revealed to him

This I think is true, not just in the context of romantic love, but also of the deeper 'connect with ourselves'. How often do we read or hear of this story of people on their death bed wishing that they had lived life differently, done the things they had wanted to, but didn't....like it's said, 'do what you want, we only regret the things we did not do'.

Rationalization....a brilliant tool....but to remember, it's a tool