Heart vs. Mind

"Life is like wrestling match; Love always wins"

-Tuesdays with Morrie

Inspiration does not pick and choose the time it decides to pay a visit. Prime example: About 3 minutes ago I was laying in bed, really looking forward to falling asleep, it's been a long day, I'm really comfortable, blah blah. But I couldn't stop thinking about some things you're about to read, and I knew I had to write something. Alas, here we are.

Inspiration is tied to several things; emotion, primarily, love. Inspiration is when you feel something kind of explode in your heart and logic is only a mere afterthought. When one experiences these explosions, the issue of right and wrong, or if whatever the source of the inspiration fits in your life or not, does not come into question. That explosion/emotion is there and you're feeling it no matter what.

Keep in mind, these explosions are not always felt with love, atleast in the conventional way. Sometimes, they can be especially terrifying. Last night I had a conversation with my boss about fun stuff (imagine!); designing my new office, blah blah. She knows I'm graduating college in May, and she asked me how long afterwards I plan on working for her. I have no idea. Miss Control Freak has no plan. Ideas, but no plan. Try to understand the horror here. Everyone has ideas, hell prisoners have ideas. But that doesn't mean they're going to bloody do anything about it.

Let me switch gears briefly. Going into college, I wanted to teach English. I love English, I love what it taught me and I want to share that. I got away from that for a while, and started going the pre-law route. I really like to argue, and I would love the money. I would also hate my life. My brain tells me to go for the money and the prestige law would give me, but my heart just isn't in it. In May, I'll have a degree in English.

Okay, back to the horror, the horror! (Conrad reference, anyone, anyone?). My whole life I've had this conflict between my head and my heart and I can only imagine that you may have as well. My head always puts up a good fight but in the end, my heart wins. The love you have for something always wins. And it's funny how it always works out, too. It may not seem so in the here and now, but once you let the heart's victory play out, you might think otherwise. Really makes you question fate, huh? Often, I think our heads tell us to stay where it's comfortable and safe (or warm, like my bed, where I was 20 minutes ago). Our hearts however, tell us to do what we really want, especially when our heads are scared. Even though my heart only has ideas at this point, I refuse to be a prisoner of my head. I'm not saying that one should just carelessly go with whatever their heart is telling them. I'm saying really consider each aspect, and own up and give in to your feelings. I know where my interest lies, and where my heart is. I know it does not involve insurance, but instead, spreading the love I have for literature, ane essentially, life, everywhere and anywhere I go.

Home

"You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in...isn't really your home anymore...all of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone?"

-Garden State


I was driving to my old house today to see a friend. I moved out of my parents house, moved in with her, and then moved back. I started getting kind of sad, like, this old house isn't my home anymore, but my childhood home isn't really home anymore either. It's a very strange feeling, that you really only have some place to put your shit.

I got to thinking about this more, pretty much all day, and it really doesn't have to be a bad thing. As children, home is home simply because you know nothing else, you don't know of man-made Islands in Dubai, or of the Pyramids in Egypt, or beaches in St. Lucia. Those are all mere pictures in a book, not places to visit, not potential homes. You just see home, the address attached to your bookbag incase you or it gets lost, that is your end all, be all, desitnation of return. Some people may always have that inner connection to where they grew up, but others may not, and neither is better or worse than the other, it's just different.

When you start to disconnect from what used to be home, it can be very, very scary. But it is all in how you look at it, life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. So taking that into account, the feeling of disconnection can be very liberating. Think about it, you could potentially go anywhere in the world and have that be home, if you wanted it to be. Maybe the scariest part of this is the actual making of a new home, not as much the idea of a new, different home.

Garden State is probably one of my favorite movies, and I never really figured out what it was really about until tonight ( I think). It is about home and what that really means. In the movie, Zach Braff never really seemed to have a real home because of his childhood, and that he sees where he was living in the movie as a "place to put your shit". He meets Natalie Portman, and it seems that she becomes home to him. Home doesn't seem so much a place as it does a state of mind. Some people can live out of a suitcase and have that be home for them because they're comfortable and happy with that. Others may have an actual home with a family and they may not consider that "home" because they aren't satisfied.

While I don't feel I have an actual home, I still feel at home, because for right now, I'm cool with where I'm at. But I know this won't always be home. For me, the end all, be all of home, is being anywhere in the world, with someone you care about, and being able to say "This is home".