WHEN THE HEART WINS

Sometimes when you meet a person, you instinctively know that that person will feature in your life henceforth. It’s like a decision taken that cannot be accounted for by personal choices; neither taste, nor religion nor race. It’s more a subconscious understanding between two people. If I were poetic, I’d say that it was a meeting of the auras that surround us, before it becomes a conscious meeting.

When you read The Fountainhead, you come across this scenario, where Howard Roark meets Dominique’s husband for the first time. He comes prepared to hate Gail Wynand for being his lover’s husband, and yet, that first time the two meet; there is no consciousness of anything apart from the feeling that they’ve known each other forever; that perhaps they were part of the same soul in another life. Past relationships cease to exist in that moment, and Dominique becomes just another person in both their lives.

It is an inherent feature of human beings in this world that we tend to believe in stronger feelings, stronger emotions; love falls upon us like a bolt of lightning, hate is felt into the very essence of our cores, happiness is shouted from the roof in a drunken-like state. As a consequence of this aspect of our existence, we forget about the subtle nuances of emotion that are actually the backdrops of one’s existence, and yet have the furthest impact.

Few are the people who understand the feeling of being softly content, pleasantly happy, and quietly morose; these are the people who have the wisdom and experience to understand that a life that is loud is a life that may be more colorful, and yet it is a life that is missing out on the delicate flavors that embrace the imagery of existence.

Hence, the concept of meeting a person and relating to them in a subconscious manner is an idea alien to most; those who undergo such an experience typically do not recognize the significance of such a moment. It is only later as they think on it that it strikes them; mostly because they cannot recall the exact moment of seeing the other person for the first time; this moment hangs in the air, suspended by the silken threads of consciousness. It is the flash of recognition between two hearts; the brain cannot account for it, yet it attempts to do so in a manner that attempts to bring into perspective this meeting.

In today’s world, where air kisses abound and strong hand-shakes rule the day, the first impression made upon a person is not the last. A person’s character tends to be hidden by the facade one fronts in response to the society’s norms. As people meet in society, they tend to hide what they really are in favor of what others expect them to be. A man of simple tastes will find himself eating caviar even though he hates it, just as he puts on an air of affluence peculiar to him. In this world, it is even more important that one listens to the inner voice in him, so that he can know, and understand when he has met a friend of the soul, someone who he cannot remember his first moment with. Thus is made a friend of the soul.