Us Humans…Between the Sense and the Sensibility…

I have been working on a short article, for which I have interviewed a number of Psychologists to talk about feelings–human feelings. Throughout these interviews, I have come to the following conclusion: Even them, psychologists– the people we think are the closest to the mystery of mind and heart– have no clue, whatsoever, of the nature of the conflict between the two greatest drives of humans, sense and sensibility.

I have decided to collect the best quotes–Or at least, some of what I think are the best quotes– and put them together, to formulate what I think is one of the best admirable answers to this human mystery:

“We think that being in love is a matter of the heart, but that’s just complete rubbish. This is not the ‘Psychologist me’ talking. This is rather the ‘ordinary human me’ talking. And I am, indeed, talking from experience. I know that when I fell in love with her, my heart did. But also did my soul, my brain, my sense…and my whole body.”

“But then what can I say…loving someone is like allowing your mind to push you into the burning fire…but the difference here is that your mind will do it willingly. It will, willingly, guide you to the fire and allow your whole body to burn…and the flames…and when you’re done…there will be ashes left for people to watch…they will all watch and learn…for you must know that no one stands on fire without being consumed, and no one, absolutely no one, breaks the rules without being doomed, and in this case, it is the rules of ‘balance’ that we are talking about…these rules that some of us tend to burden the self with”

“Sometimes we feel the need to embrace the paradoxes of our senses to understand the reason behind our existence…our existence as human beings…but I believe, after 20 years of experience in the field of Psychology, I have come to conclude, and most importantly to comprehend that it is rather the paradoxes of our existence that we should embrace, for our senses to forgive us. We have burdened ourselves with so many rules…’Don’t feel,’ ‘don’t love,’ ‘don’t be sad,’ ‘don’t be happy’…We have put too many limitations on our senses that we have confused our existence as humans…We have confused our sensibilities to the world around us”

“Are you telling me that these people, in reality, do not believe in that feeling…that is mostly nonsense…Do you see how I have used that word there–nonsense? with the adverb mostly? That’s exactly how people use their feelings nowadays; they put them at the very end of their sentences, they use them with random adverbs, but most importantly they do not pay enough attention to understand them…Just like I have not payed enough attention to the meaning of that sentence”

“We do tend sometimes to control everything in our lives…every single detail about our existence…but I wonder if we will even learn how to deal with that mess that our feelings create for us…my profession requires me to believe that the mind is the origin of all feelings, but my sense, my sense as a human tells me that the heart administers the mind in this matter, and that’s what science has come to prove lately. I don’t know about you, I don’t even know about everyone else, but I know I enjoy the mess that this mystical relationship creates in our lives…I say mystical, because it all happens in the soul…even though I am a man of science, I am here connected to the more delicate side of my being…it’s usually the side we tend to ignore, between the thought of science and religion, or even between the thought of the heart and the great mind”

“That’s an excellent question, but I can’t help not giving you an extensive explanation for the reasons behind the answer that I have for it, before providing you with one…us, men of science, would never admit it because it goes against everything we have ever worked on proving and demonstrating for the most parts of our lives…but allow me to say it to you, as after 32 years and 2 months of experience exactly, I have no fear, and no conservations, whatsoever, to this bold idea of the heart and matter of the sense…the human mind, if not a mystery, then is an abundance of enigmas– yes that might have a power of its own to create these puzzled ideas, but it still creates a very-hard-to-solve-puzzle at the end– and the reason it is hard for us to live with a brain, is the fact that this organ takes its commands from the great master of sensibilities, the heart. Very hard to understand, and even harder to admit, but it’s the truth. And allow me to remind you that what makes the ‘sense’ behind our existence is that idiosyncratic dialogue between the origin of sense and the cradle of sensibility…Please excuse my tendency to be poetic, unlike my usual self…as this interview has touched me deeply. It reminded me of the truth, of who we really are– Poetic beings”

I hope you enjoyed reading these passages as much as I have enjoyed the honor of interviewing these psychologists. They are all “men of science,” as they call themselves, but they are still considered “poetic beings.”