Head or heart?

100TH POST!!

(For my 100th post, I'd like to discuss...)

Something I have thought about A LOT is, which is right? Head or heart?

And it's not just about love, but often enough it does come with that stereotype.

For example, deciding where to live. A person can make a HUGE list of pros and cons on where to live. Maybe you want to live in Florida because of the beaches and sunshine, but you're not a fan of thunderstorms (or hurricanes). Maybe you want to live closer to your family but being TOO close means they'll be more involved in your life and you're not sure about that. Maybe you fell in love with someone but you'd have to move hundreds, or even thousands, of miles to be with them.

Which do you decide? Do you move to Florida and tough out your fear of thunderstorms? Do you stay away from your family but yearn to see them on holidays nonetheless? Do you stay where you're comfortable or move across the country for love?

If it were up to me, if it were me in those situations, right now in my life I'd move to Florida, move closer to my family, and move across the country, respectively. Like I said, I'm a heart girl myself. I will argue with myself for weeks, months, even years until I have my final decision made. And I don't know why I bother, honestly!! I KNOW which one I'm going to ultimately go with. I know I'm a heart girl. I know that my heart will SCREAM at me until I acknowledge what it's trying to tell me. I will find myself wishing my stupid heart would just shut the heck up, and then I realize that I am trying to shove it in a box of some sort. When I read Edgar Allen Poe's "Tell Tale Heart" in eighth grade, I had no idea how much I would feel the torment of the heart later in my life.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/telltale.html

Granted, the issues I struggle with do not come anywhere near murdering someone and stuffing them under the floorboards, but I think you get the idea, yes?

So what's up with this issue between the head and the heart? Why do they have to be on opposite sides? Honestly, what can I say? I don't know either. Does anyone know the answer to this question?

And how many people are miserable because they chose the wrong side? How do you KNOW when you've chosen the right side? Do you feel better? Do you feel worse? In the situations I've been in that required I choose between head and heart, I've always felt both better and worse after making my decision, often in ways I didn't expect. How does that happen?

Can you tell I think about this a lot? I have like a kajillion questions and no answers. My first line of research was Google. What a great help that was...I found several articles that read, "Follow Your Heart," several articles that read "Bad Advice: Follow Your Heart" and even more articles that suggested that the heart and the head have yet another adversary: the gut.

Holy moly. How is ANYONE supposed to figure this stuff out? It's no wonder we have a major flux of teen pregnancies and divorces.

According to this website, 1/3 of all females in America will get pregnant before the age of 20. Whoa. This website shows the population of women in America was 157 million. According to the stats, then, approximately 51.81 million of them will/have gotten pregnant before the age of 20. That website about women and statistics say that 85.4 million of the 157 million surveyed in the Census are mothers of all ages. These numbers don't include abortions, etc. but I think you get the picture.

It's pretty common knowledge that the divorce rate in the US is pretty high. On this website, it shows the statistical marriages and divorces, divided by state. According to the numbers, the current divorce rate is around 48%. That still seems awfully high.

There just isn't any good advice out there other than "it takes some head, some heart, and some gut to make the right choices." Have you ever tried to make a cake or cookie recipe with vague instructions like "some" flour, "a handful" of sugar, a "good amount" of cocoa powder? How did that turn out for ya?

So let's take a poll. What has worked best for you in the past?