Head or Heart

 

While growing up, my mother had imparted to me one of my life’s foremost lessons. She had said: son, do listen to your head but always follow your heart. This battle between heart and head is an ongoing engagement that would never end. And life would offer you enough dilemmas and doubts to keep feeding this battle. The question is not who will win, but who out of the two, would you allow to win. Either is ok, it’s totally up to you. You decide.

 

In this adventure called life, I have almost always allowed my heart to win, especially during all those moments that have and continue to define my life. My heart never allowed me to follow a charted path, designed by the society and world at large. Though at times my head would nibble and throw caution upon my path, try to logic that my path was pernicious and full of folly, yet my heart would say keep going. And seldom has my heart been wrong, actually never. Even when I had thought that it was but looking back my life I find that heart has always been right.

 

Starting as a school dropout at 10, pursuing high altitude climbing from 9 and growing up with the dream to travel the world and climb all mountains was nothing short of ridiculous with absolutely no scope of success. Everyone said so to my mom and to me, if anyone dared, yet I pursued, persisted and never even once thought I would not succeed in my dream. What gave me this immense faith in my dreams, nothing but every beat of my heart that always said rather loudly that I was on the right track even if it seemed totally lost. Everything that has happened to me, has happened to me following my dream of traveling the world and climbing every mountain.

 

So what happened to my head? Did it feel distressed and dejected and defeated! At times it did, especially when at short term I would look at the outcome of my heart’s advice falling flat, my head would pop up and cry triumphant: I told you so. But having passed that moment, looking back, I would see that even if what at the time seemed a setback and failure (having caused momentary distress) was actually the right thing to happen and experience.

 

So now my head and heart work in unison like two wheels of a well-oiled bicycle. My heart makes the decision instantly that I follow and then the head tries to make sense of it and eventually comes to the same conclusion and then they shake hands. That’s how my head and heart meet and collaborate.

 

Why do I call life as the greatest adventure of all? At least mine is. If your life is not your greatest adventure then I am afraid you are not living at all or you got down from the wrong side of the bed today morning. Adventure is an activity that is full of uncertainty, perils, with little control, which holds substantial chances of loss of life or and limbs or all of the above. Now look at life, how much control do we really have over the outcome of our efforts! How much do we really know, how much we can predict and how much can we really handle! There are unknown perils at every step, nothing is under our control except our thoughts feelings and action perhaps. And at the end not only would we lose our limbs but our life too, thus concluding the adventure of life. Another great facet of life is its constant flux, always changing, altering, and challenging us by shaking our foundations and beliefs.

 

I have always been willing to change. I have welcomed change though I have some constants in my life. For example my climbing and traveling. This never changes, what alters are my destinations, paths and how I climb. Similarly I have few other constants. Like my solo life. No matter how many friends I have worldwide or how many women have passed through or how many have offered me a family, I have always been by myself. To engage with others but when the time is apt to leave and hit the road with I, me and myself.

 

In matters of heart, my heart has always been rather non-responding and it is the head that has ruled where my heart was concerned. I am an absolute believer of personal freedom, both ways. To have, to give and receive. Anything short is not acceptable. I have always enjoyed my own company most, no matter what. After all why do I need human company when my mind is full of countless memories! I am, some say, an ambivert. If you see me in a social scenario, it would see I am an extrovert since I connect and engage fully with people around me, always taking the initiative. But otherwise when left to myself, I coil within my inner core and disappear into some remote mountain for weeks.

 

Now very recently I have been hit by the biggest fundamental shift in my life. It came totally out of the blue. My head cautioned raising all the red flags, since in matters of heart, it is always my head that takes charge. Yet I find myself heeding to the heart and my head following. The change that is happening right now within myself, is so huge, so deep, that I am shaken to my core. The very foundation upon which my life has stood till now, unshaken by the fiercest of storms, is churned up from within. I am changing and I am not the same person I was few months ago. This new me has reworked and reconstructed the new foundation. Compared to my earlier self, I won’t say that my current self is a failure, but something entirely new. A new adventure.

 

And I think why my head is following my heart because fundamentally I am still very much free, very much traveling the world and climbing every mountain. While everything has changed right from my very foundation including every pore of my being, yet nothing has changed at all. The only thing that has changed is that my life has become brighter, happier, more excited and now the adventure called life just seems way bigger than before. And I am so eagerly looking forward to the rest of the adventure that I am left with.

 

My life already had everything to make it worth living and now it has something even more to make it more worth living. And I know for sure that from now on, I will keep living, loving and adventuring more and more and much more. That battle between head and heart has finally concluded and neither is a winner. No one needs to be.

 

My head and heart are in perfect unison and at peace. Are yours!