HEAD VS. HEART

It's a battle as old as time, the one between head and heart, primarily as it concerns romantic relationships. Luckily for me, I settled that particular battle a long time ago. When it comes to matters of romance neither organs have a say. I decide on using what really matters - a calculator and a checkbook.

Ha. Just kidding guys. I wish I had the wiring to be a gold-digger. Life would be void of love but filled with things! Oh, the glorious things!

Where the real fight between head and heart happens for me is in the tricky realm of future aspirations. Simply put, what is it that I want to do with my life? What will be my verb? "Hi, I'm Audrey and I'm a _______________." You know when you're young and what you believe you have the capacity for is limitless? "I want to be a ballerina! I want to be a zookeeper!

I've noticed that the older I've gotten, the more I've limited myself. And that's not just me. It's a lot of us and we all do it with the reasoning of being realistic. Our heads love to steer us towards realistic goals luring us with the idea that they're safer, better. All of my decisions made under that reasoning leave me feeling half-fulfilled.

I've always wanted to write. If you were to ask 9-year-old Audrey what she wanted to be, after yelling "a Spice girl," she'd say "I want to write!" And between then and now there were a few deviations: a fashion designer, an interior designer, a psychologist, a social worker, until I finally settled on journalist.

I chose journalism as my "verb" because I figured it was the most realistic application of what I really wanted to do - write. And I loved it. I still love it. But the fact remains that my head warped what I really wanted to do into something else for the sake of safety (which is kind of funny because journalism has been called a dying profession, so there goes my safe job).

Our hearts are risky little devils. They yell at us to do things that our brains absolutely do not understand. And our brains are conditioned by the world to want to keep us safe, so you can't be so angry at the little bugger for trying to keep you in a safe bubble. But there's destruction in allowing our heads to always win.

The more we let our heads override our hearts, the less our hearts speak up until one day we're not really even sure of what it is we want anymore. And that is the worst. I'd rather be a person sure and passionate of the fact that I want to do something risky than someone who is absolutely undecided and therefore settles for the first average option that presents itself. Or so I've recently discovered.

I can't say I came upon this grand epiphany on my own though. Two summers ago a older man in a Goodwill recommended that I buy The Alchemist when he saw me eyeing the used books. While it freaked me out that this stranger was talking to me, I bought the book and only ended up reading it this past summer.

So to that guy, thank you. And to you all (all 5 of you who will read this) pick up the book and start letting your heart win.