HEADS and HEARTS: BOND or BATTLE?

The human heart was long believed to be the essence of a person. And so warriors cut them out from their victims to finalize their victories. The human brain, in contrast, was often discarded in ancient burial rites as a totally dispensable item. Over time, humanity has switched tracks. We are left to wonder if we've made the right choice.

It's easy to say we need them both. Of course we do. Still, their differences in our life should be better appreciated. For instance, consider the brainiest guy we know: Albert Einstein. He shook the world with his theory of relativity. It is his-head-to-our-heads explanation of how this phenomenon known as time is not an absolute. Rather, relative to other forces.

It takes about 16 pages of higher math top reach this astonishing conclusion...and yet my children understood it even before they could read words let alone crunch numbers! All you had to do was ask them how relatively long the days were before Christmas in contrast to the days after.

Everyone knows -- with their hearts -- that time is either terribly or wonderfully relative to whatever we are awaiting or dreading. Certainly this fact -- and It is a fact -- doesn't shove Albert off the stage of intellectual history. But it does remind our heads that our hearts have a say in all this too. It's not only the Tin Man who feels incomplete without one.

None of this is to say our feelings should supersede our facts. Emotions shouldn't over-ride intellect. Better to say our emotions should ride our facts. Like a sentient horseman rides in the saddle of the stallion. We have entered an age of roaring, rearing intellectual energy -- computers, data banks, Internet, smart-phones, Google. By themselves, all this energy can sweep us virtually anywhere. But with a feeling rider in the saddle, our chances of reaching good land is far better than if all this intellectual energy were to remain saddle-less.

Might this be called a modest alert....? A warning that the inexorable accumulation of more and more intellectual gadgetry is "progress" only "relative" to the "time" it takes us to accomplish something good with it...