Of Heart and Mind

Tired and fatigued by all the ramblings of his sundry heart, no one to share them with and feeling after a very long the inadequacy of his mind, Kasper decided to pen his thoughts into the pensieve that this blog seems to have become.

Men are organizations. And like each organization, each Man has many departments for different purposes. This is a story about two of the most critical departments in Men. The department of Heart, which is also sometimes called Instinct or Subconscious depending which school of thought did the Man in question attend. This department is the first point of interpretation of external events and how they affect the Man. Another important department is the department of execution – Mind.

This is story of a particular Man who was known among other Men as Neo.

Heart is a keeper of so many feeling and emotions. There are processes at work there that even the smartest in Mind are unable to decipher. So it is the prerogative of the employees at the Heart to articulate some of the emotional jargon into a language that the employees at the Mind can understand. The honest and sometimes gullible employees at Heart, who know no deceit nor treachery tell the Mind people these secrets with a faith that they (the Mind people) can process them further. Oh, so naive can the Heart employees be sometimes.

Men at the Mind, though lagging the men at the Heart in terms of understanding and processing have a need to establish superiority in all matters. Even those that are under the purview of the heart. A Man finds it impossible to ‘move a muscle’ until the men at Mind allow. And this control over the physical manifestation of Man has deluded the Mind people to a degree that they are convinced of their superiority in the system.

The heart people are a frustrated lot at times. Though smarter and more capable than their peers at the department of Mind, their strengths are rendered useless because the processes at the Man require them to run all their observations through the mind. And the low processing ability and inefficiency of the men at Mind, causes a lot of data loss and huge lag in their understanding, interpreting the situation, planning the course of action and execution.

This domination of the department of Men has continued for ages and has become the norm. Until one organization decided to challenge this way of running things.

A Promise, To Die For

A story of death rests in my drawer in the office. Another story, of death, goes on the blog. Some call me morbid. Not too wrong, are they?

3 AM:
He had the gun pointed to his head. Not in the way they show it in the movies. You know, with the barrel pointed at the temple. He was staring down the barrel. Waiting for death to lunge out from in there any moment. His brain was in a serious discussion with his index finger which, for now, was ambling around the trigger, carelessly, waiting for inspiration. As he had. For most of his life.

This part of his life, not surprisingly, is called ‘The Inspiration’.

He wanted to end the grind. The relentless pain and misery. Or maybe he just got bored? Na. He had a good life, which flashed before his eyes. Not like they say in the movies. He was trying his best to make some sense out of it.

He looked around his apartment at the pictures of all the people he loved. And those who had loved him. He was supposed to feel an obligation towards them that he did not feel. No matter how hard he tried.

“Why?” he wondered. “Why is it so easy to be selfish?”

“It’s not. You are doing all of them a favor. Trust me.” There was another voice inside him. He hadn’t listened to it so far, and now it was bursting out of him. His mind, had suppressed it up until now. No more. No more.

“What do you worry about? The pain you’ll cause them? Let me give you some perspective – there is no such thing as a lasting sense of loss. You have lost loved ones, haven’t you? How much do you think about them now? It seemed like you’ll never get over the grief at the time. Look at you now. Life goes on, buddy.”

He listened intently to the voice and was trying to find arguments, but he found his finger moving on to the trigger now. He found his hand firming its grip around the revolver.

“There is salvation waiting at the end of that tunnel. Its coming for you. Freedom – of heart and mind. You are your own God at this time.”

The thought, now lodged in his mind gave him a sense of power. His arrogance, now assuaged, accepted the fact rather easily. It was so easily to fool him. Well, who has been served well by arrogance, ever!

“Allow yourself the gift. You deserve it. You have been a good son, husband and father.”

“I have been. Haven’t I? I have worked so hard for 25 years of my life to provide for my family and my loved ones. They can do without me. They need me out of their lives now.”

He had worked his way into the best engineering schools in the country and then to the best business schools. He had slogged the best years of his life in a top-notch job that he loved so much. And he had provided well for them. Assuming that they needed him to provide for them. Assumption. He believed the arrogance was an ‘occupational perk’. He could easily afford it.

“That is the only way they’ll be free. This is the only way to unlock the true happiness for them.”

“What have I become?” he asked.

“It is your duty to set your spirit free. You have suppressed it long enough. Fulfill your duty to your spirit.”

There was a smile on his face. The fingers, which were not paying any heed to his mind until now, suddenly seemed to looked at him questioningly. He nodded, slowly.

FLASH!

He woke up the next morning, a new man. A part of him that had outlived its importance, and needed to go had died. He had promised himself that he will pursue his dreams. He wanted to read, write, travel and experience things.

Guess what. He did exactly that.

Yet another, true story.