THIS is the original post I began writing last Friday evening about Our Hearts — sorry if it seems a bit out of order, or somewhat repetitive, but…I think it is an important/foundational point in my personal breakthrough, so I am going ahead and posting it for now:
While I have much much (maybe much too much) to say on the topic of perfectionism and the role it has played in my life (despite not thinking I’m a perfectionist in the classic sense — don’t worry I will explain what I mean by this within the next couple posts), I want to take a slight detour and talk about our Hearts…the representative symbol and place/location of feelings versus the thoughts housed in our minds…
Growing up Asian American and in a school district where 99% of high school graduates proceeded to university, I was raised and groomed to highly appreciate and value education and academics, almost to the point that it cannot be separated from my identity and sense of self-worth. Becoming educated and graduating with honors from this or that program was never really celebrated as an achievement, it was just what was expected, a given…as though to not obtain a higher education and degree was tantamount to failing and being set up to have no chance at really succeeding in life.
Basically, the message communicated was that success in life, at least somehow for me and those with a similar fate as myself, depended upon my education and academic achievement — my most valuable asset was my mind, my ability not really so much to think “deeply” (which I believe involves the heart), but to be able to study, process and memorize information quickly and efficiently, and, really, to be able to regurgitate with enough accuracy to perform well on tests, so that I could have a report card and GPA that would somehow magically open the doors I would need to have opened for a good life.
Not that I don’t highly value education, because I do…nor that I don’t believe strongly in the importance of a sound and powerful mind (I believe our minds and the resulting ability to make choices rationally and freely and exercise such things as self-control and wisdom are an essential defining characteristic God gave humanity to set us apart in creation)…but there is something about the heart and what it represents that is equally significant in defining who we are as human beings.
At one point during university, I decided to take advantage of a couple of free counseling sessions offered to registered students, to process some of the emotions I was struggling with at the time. I remember one of the points my counselor made that really spoke to me was the simple declaration that as human beings, we are both rational and irrational.
It’s not that I didn’t “know” this simple fact before, but I realized during that significant moment that (1) I was naturally inclined/programmed to value my rational mind over my irrational heart based on having placed too much emphasis on formal education and academic achievement over what really matters in the big picture, and (2) that this devaluation of my heart and emotions — my irrational side – was actually quite diminishing and harmful to my overall well-being.
Hm….this actually ties back into the argument that the pursuit of true perfection in life runs deeper and often counter to perfectionism, which really is a more superficial pursuit of a “picture perfect” life.
How so?
By nature, our rational minds and thoughts are much easier to define and control and to predict than our irrational hearts and feelings. When we are living according to what is “rational” and logical, things make sense and are understandable, and therefore if we exercise enough self-control and submit to reason, everything can be nice, neat, clean and tidy…possibly even seemingly “perfect.”
When we allow our hearts or our emotions to factor in, however, things get (or at least appear to get) much much messier. We don’t always feel and want what is rational — in fact, most of the time, we don’t — because our feelings are by nature irrational. Our feelings can seem good or bad, high or low, up and down. Regardless of whether we attempt to place a moral judgement on our feelings, really, they just are what they are, when they are, and how they are. What we decide to do with our feelings is our choice (because yes, they can be trained and “transformed” by the renewing of our minds and application of discipline), but if we neglect to accurately acknowledge and validate how we feel before making a decision one way or the other, we suffer loss… and potential emotional disaster and spiritual emptiness.
Generally, I don’t believe that our hearts and feelings alone can be depended upon as reliable guides for making wise decisions. But it is also seriously un-wise and a violation to how God created us to try and completely disregard our emotions for the sake of making what we have been lead to think are rational decisions, because in a real, whole, deep consideration of our experience of life, our feelings are just as necessary, important and vital as our minds to our nature as human beings.
When our goal is to pursue a picture-perfect life, then our feelings and irrational heart desires can become a real inconvenience and a nuisance because they can make things conflicting, confusing and messy. When our focus instead is on living a life that is better in deeper ways, one that is more truly whole and ultimately good, then our hearts become the valuable players they were created to be in informing our decisions in how we relate to ourselves, one another and the world around us.
I take great comfort in the fact that at the beginning of the world, I believe that our Creator could just as easily have decided to create Robots, or at least more robot-like, more predictably positive beings, instead of creating People with the ability the think, feel, challenge, make decisions freely to either obey or disobey, to trust or distrust, to follow or fall away… Just as an artist can decide whether or not to color within the lines or splash paint seemingly haphazardly on a canvas, God could have decided to make us and this world much more “picture perfect” than it is as a result of our “imperfect,” rational mixed with irrational, free-to-choose human nature. I think, because ultimately He has a plan for everything to work out for good that cannot be thwarted, He sees a deeper perfection–a deeper love–that is made possible, that exists, as a result of what He decided for us.