Wise Heart

Wise Heart

Samuel Bird

Dark nights staring at a ceiling while I couldn’t see were not ended by my falling asleep but by the rising sun. The world went on as mine collapsed from below me. The basic facts I had predicated all of my social connections were collapsing, and with it the people I loved were gone. I was torn between the highest of ideals that I had, and all the people that I wanted to belong wit and share those ideals. I wished at that moment that I could say I was refusing others, but I was only refusing their possibility as I had no instantiated closeness. So here I was, caught between severing what I saw as the last connection that I had to others and that thing I call my Esse Maxim. It was not difficult because it was a choice with a clear answer, though not an easy one. It was so categorically imperative as to be a given. I would honor my Esse Maxim no matter what it cost me. It was merely a matter of mourning out the loss of what never was, but where it was in my mind, reminded me it could have been. But then, why wasn’t it so? I began to be ragefully bitter that I was leaving behind the world from loyalty to my highest ideal, and no one was chasing after me. Wouldn’t they miss me? Wouldn’t they want me to stay? Years spent trying to be a part of a people and no longer be the broken component of a community had left me back where I started. This anger turned into a motivation. I would still have to mourn this, but now it was more than just the will to be loyal to what I foundationally believed. It was now a matter of living out my pain. I both had my reason and my motivation. I slowly untied every string that tied me back to them, though I attempted to build new connections under this new and more possibly true pretense. Actions came into the world such that I signified what I meant by my life. In protest, others came and wanted their reason for my varying against the role that they had for me. Ad hoc, I wished to give them an answer. I told them that it was primarily because of how my highest ideal varied from theirs. I then said it was because the pretenses for our relationships and their associated assertions were inconsistent with themselves. Finally, I told them that it was because my being a part of their society had been the rubbing of sand in a wound. While my reasons are so far no more admirable than anyone else's, I am better at communicating than some. For that reason, more have respected my choice than I thought. But then, I wanted to remind them that others could have the same reasons for making my choice, but be worse at presenting their ideas and for that reason they would not respect them. One friend said that I was more reasonable in how I went about this choice, so they respected me despite doing the reverse. I had fooled them, and I regretted it. My structure and reason of thought were a way to cover up what I was already going to do. My soul, heart, and flesh were at odds with what they valued, but at no point did the mind come in. Only after the net result came from the winning party did it retroactively make a case for doing what it would. I could spin anything I did to make sense after the fact given a decently opportune context. So then, I was only reasonable in my justification, not my choosing. The choosing was influenced by the need to achieve this highest ideal. The heart had made up its mind and only told the mind after the fact to make a case for it, but gave no instruction. The heart, especially in the baser sense, can be fickle. Fortunately, the mind can evaluate it post it’s wishes, and supply feedback. We can be aware of thoughts, be aware of that thought, and be aware that we are thinking these thoughts. With this, we can begin to guide the behemoth our being is. However, the gut inferences of the heart precede this. The reason was how I would try to convince the heart for next time, but it had already made up its mind. How then can we say we are the rational animal when this cognition is after the fact? Somewhere between the mind and organism is cognition that is not conscious. Off from our view of the singularity of consciousness is a new show of facts that is shown to the body in mutiny. This strange and abstract world of representation may seem like a fact to fight, but it is instead one to plan out its coexistence with the rest of our being. These processes plan out the flow of blood and digestion of food without my planning and only in my breath meet this core of consciousness I am. These recesses of computing and processing that I am not aware of have a language and a medium I am not aware of. They harbor their one wisdom, if I can heed it cautiously. I am still master, but they are that beast that I am impressive for taming. I attempt to win them over, fail, and then have to be responsible for their actions. However, I can learn what it values, make a deal with it, and keep my side. The world of accessible knowledge has soon-found limits. My ability to intake, process, and encode information has a given ceiling that I can expand with effort, but has its maximum. My ability to then break down that information and process it into new information has its own limits. From reading books and building ideas, I have soon found the cave wall ceiling in the recesses of my mind. Due to blood and resources, I can and perhaps ought to maximize what I have, but I only have that. However, it seems to me that this other portion of me is without its limits. I can only learn so much before my brain aches, but the heart can survive all the quiet wisdom someone earns therein. Perhaps the next given amount of growth would require a greater degree of effort than the first, but it is still possible. This is where my genius lies. You would not need to look far to find a philosopher who thought better, both in terms of having information in their mind and the power they have to manipulate it. I got lucky in my biology, but only so much, and perhaps even not enough. I quickly learned that I could impress no one with my ability to think alone. So then, I could break into this cognition that I didn’t see. I began to be aware of its outputs and how it would respond. It held less of the mathematically deductive qualities of my aware cognition and instead could take in great amounts of data points, and make a story out of it. I could be lovingly skeptical of it and give it feedback, but it possessed a wisdom that I could easily forget. I could build it up to not just offset that thinking I was so limited in, but to round it off. I could better cognate on the human condition as I was being a more whole version of what that was. That is only possible by being that thing that I am. That thing has a heart, and in its emotive inductions, it has its silent wisdom. 

We arrive back in this position where I am using reason to make a case for what it is that I will, but much of what I will comes before it is in these recesses I can’t see in my mind. There is no reason to tire the soul in doing what the body can. In this instance, I speak to you via reason. I make a case from facts that compile to greater fact. But, why do I make this case? What inspires it? Mental games of trying to dodge other’s attempts to pit me against myself left me with a powerful ability to navigate ideas and be aware of them. However, it also led to me being very skeptical and pained by the process. Why do you say what you do? Is it to hurt me? Why do I say what I do? Is it to manipulate you? I think I can say that is my goal. It is to use convincing both that you are aware and otherwise. I carefully allow emotionally charged passionate to emerge from myself to connect us and to enliven you. However, I can justify it because I attempt to do so to your end. I don’t do what I do so you can be happy or rich, but for what I reason you will wish to have done in that moment before you die. I go back and forth and flip around to find the end of a circle to see why I say what I do. Am I evil and just trying to get power over you? Am I just seeking to be in your heart so I can be somewhere? Perhaps, but I have faith that I want what I do in part for you. This still doesn’t answer why I do what I do. You listen to me because it benefits you. It benefits you because I love you. But why do I talk? For that same reason, you listen. My affinity for you is both my medium and my motivation. Only with my proximity to you can I affect you. Esse Maxim can only be served deeply to your soul by one you trust with such. Whenever a word is uttered, the signifying has an intention with an associated motivation from the speaker. Whatever literalities are expressed, the implicit assertion and endeavor is that I desire for you. This is my love manifest; that your ideals become my own. Or at least, as far as you are concerned. This is where my philosophy moves from the least of all thought to the most needed and consequential. No matter what I have done in academic and cognitive labor, it would be for naught if it were not for how I connect my mind to my heart, and then that heart to yours. This makes a highway between our minds that is by way of these hearts. My mind may be more limited than my peers, but I can make a case that I have trained my heart further than they could. This heart doesn’t have the limits the thinking mind does, and with it, I surpass them in consequentialism. I allow this inductive wisdom to take precedence as I deem so. Think of romantic love. The person who will cause some of the most pain to someone is their mate, and yet the heart dumbs the brain to not question it so it can start the dance of the ages. No reasonable person would want to start such a dance, but they also would not want to wish it away having started it. The heart beats out the mind long enough for our values to allow for our blood's perpetuance, and then to value such. I often spend years making large life choices, only to decide and execute in a matter of minutes based on my gut. The more I have trained such, the more it has served me well, even in calculative thought. This strength of the heart is a strength indeed. This strength I hold is not mine in Monopoly. By all means, build up what the mind has and what it can do with it. This is the great love of my life. However, I am a philosopher. This is not the love of data or even knowledge, but even wisdom. Knowledge can tell you the map, but this wisdom is you plotting a course. Knowledge can tell you the facts at hand, however, wisdom is your creation of their meaning to you. Knowledge is a dead fact in the mind. Wisdom is such coming alive. Over the coming months, I have much to figure out in the mess that I am. How will I build what my heart needs and give it its consolation for its sacrifice? Can there be a point where my highest ideal coincides with what I need from each day? Can I find a quietness in the world around me to counter the feverish nature that I write? When the mind offers options of how, train the heart to pick from so with its why. Please, join all the greats in building up a powerful and knowledgable mind. However, don’t miss the more infinite opportunity of directing so by developing a wise heart.