We are constantly bombarded with the idea that following our hearts is the key to happiness and a succesful life. Successful people are proposed as models on how, in spite the curved balls life have threw at them, they clang to the promptings of their hearts and succeeded. On the other hand, there is an increasing reaction to a prevalent hedonism. Deny your heart its promptings if you want to excel! The path of self-denial and suffering seems to be the key to a successful life. So, should we follow our hearts? What do we understand by "the heart" anyway? Is that heart the seat of our emotions or the key of firm convictions that we need to maintain in spite of those very emotions?
65. The heart begins in love and rests in joy.
66. Follow your heart if your heart is right.
67. We have power over our heart.
69. Enduring power is greater than overpowering power.
70. Magnanimity makes us greater.
71. The body learns deeper than it unlearns.
72. Temperance tempers all emotions.
73. Shame feels bad but can do good.
74. Emotional health needs right rewards.
75. Love is a virtue; the most important.
76. Faith and hope are spiritual needs.
77. Humans are unfinished.
Often we mistake negative emotions with emotions we should not experience (shame, fear, anger, etc). At the same time we encourage people to follow their hearts, as if our passions were always pointing in the right direction.
The truth is that emotions are a set of reactions that help emotional creatures to stay alive and thrive, and so all emotions are good to have. But it is also true that our emotional reactions are not always realistic enough and we fear situations we should not fear, etc. Our reason can be of help here and tell us what is reasonably dangerous.
Aside the numerous disagreements between our emotions and our best knowledge, there is an additional problem in our hearts. We tend to fall into particularly popular unrealistic emotional responses: it is easier to be greedy than generous. Our heart is not neutrally set to pursue our own good; but often pursues unrealistic goals in its own terms.
However, we are not hopelessly abandoned to the motions of our emotions, we can educate them. With the prudence guiding the right way, we can slowly but surely steer our emotional responses until one day the emotional response is adequate. So, follow your heart, if and only if, your heart is right.
Still the virtuous person is not yet guaranteed a happy, fufilled life. The ultimate human needs are beyond this material world. We need a love that we are incapable to offer, a hope we are unable to build and believing truths beyond our capacity to proof. Humans remain an unfinished project open to a fulfillment beyond our own capacities. Could that fulfilment exist? Or are our hearts condemened to be hopelessly restless?