My Heart Goes One Way And My Life Another

We should all listen to our hearts. The truth is that none of us can be absolutely consistent every day and every hour. We are inhabited by contradictions because we love and hate at the same time, because we are brave and at the same time we flee, because we are good and at the same time we can cause harm. However, we managed to deal with these contradictions, so that we built a more or less consistent way of being and living.

For some people it is not possible to build that minimum foundation of consistency. They live as they do not want to live. They work as they do not want to work. They love as they do not want to love. In these cases, there is a strong dichotomy between what is felt from the heart and what is put into practice in the acts. It is as if they live a borrowed existence.

The cases are many. People who do not really love their partner, but maintain a relationship with her despite everything. People who go to work every day and all they desperately want is time to get out of there. There are also those who chose a profession that they detest or who appear all the time that they appreciate the people around them, when in reality they just want to see them disappear.

Of course, we all have days or stages in which we deny a little of the way we live. In certain circumstances we lose some taste of work or we feel estranged from the partner or we are bothered by what surrounds us. But when, in essence, we are connected to life from the bottom of the heart, those episodes are no more than fleeting and are overcome with relative ease.

When the heart is not connected to life

Surely many of the people who cannot experience life from their hearts will say that this is due to some external limitation. If they hate their job, but stay there, they will argue that “need has a dog’s face”, that the bills at the end of the month are not waiting and that it would be very difficult to get a new job. However, you also do not see them looking for it or making any kind of effort to get out of a job that they say they hate.

This is even more common in relationships. Surely you know someone who maintains a constant complaint in front of their partner and continues to do so for years and years. If you tell him to leave that person, he will reply that he will one day, or cannot do it because of the children, because of the shared mortgage, or because of religious convictions.

It is then that anyone asks: If it is impossible to overcome that situation, why, then, do not look for some way to adapt to it? And if it is possible to overcome it, why not do what is necessary to end this alleged torment?

It is in those cases when the heart goes one way and life on the other. The person suffers and feels trapped, but does not visualize a way out of that labyrinth. Either he believes that “this is life” and that is how it should be accepted; or you think you are unable to make a change. Deep down, what operates is an unconscious force that is unknown.

The unconscious commands

Most of us believe that our reasons for acting are completely clear, despite the fact that we are often asked why we do what we do and we give very vague answers. The truth is that the human mind is much more complex than that. It seems that there is a wide unknown area for ourselves, where the deepest and most authentic motives of what we do are housed.

Since we are born, we are subject to the desire of others. Our parents construct a conscious meaning for our existence, but they also deposit unconscious expectations and desires for our life.

A depressed mother, for example, transmits the love she can give you, but also a certain gray halo around everything that happens. A distant father gives you love in his own way, but he also becomes an unreachable ghost that you may want to please and bring closer by getting good grades, or by being “very judicious”, or by making trouble everywhere.

If your heart goes one way and your life goes the other, what happens is that there is a contradiction between your conscious desire and your unconscious desire. You probably live as someone wishes, or wished, you to live. That someone is, surely, one of your parents or one of the relevant figures from your childhood.

And you want to please him, but deep down you know that you act motivated by someone else’s desire. However, something within you is preventing you from rebelling and claiming a genuine life, tailored to your own desires. That something is the childish fear of losing the love of those people on whom, unconsciously, you continue to depend.

Inside each one of us lives an unprotected child who would do whatever was necessary to not lose the love, attention and care of his parents. Some learn to recognize the resources they have to make an individual life, away from those shadows.

Others, on the other hand, continue to gravitate around an unresolved unconscious conflict with one of their parents. They grow up, study, work, and become doctors or even presidents. But they feel that they are not themselves.