Finding the voice of my heart

My head/intellectual mind has a voice as does my heart. The former is strong and articulate. The latter, the voice of my heart, is quiet and mystical, not easily given to words. Often she (I am quite certain “she,” the voice of my heart, is wholly feminine while the voice of my intellectual mind is rather androgynous) hides herself while the voice of my mind can readily make itself known, if I choose. Not so, the voice of my heart. She struggles to express herself. Nonetheless, both voices are equally passionate about life, love and social justice.

During the past two and one-half months that I have been dealing with my eye infection, I have been wrestling, inordinately, with these two voices of mine; the intellectual one held back in its yearning to speak and interact while the voice of my heart was drawn inward, needing to tend, first and foremost, to my personal wellbeing. As a consequence of this internal struggle, I found myself, also, confused as to who I am, in truth. A painful identity crisis, once again, constantly loomed over me.

Am I more definitively aligned with the voice of my intellect, the one most often expressed in my interpersonal relations? Or, is the quiet voice of my heart truly who I am?

I knew I had, over time, developed a voice, as surely as I had come to develop a Self. Yet, I could not come to terms with what the voice of that Self sounds like, if not totally mute.  Thus I found myself wary of speaking at all, feeling as if any words expressed at all brought forth pain. I didn’t wish to disappear but could find no way to truly be present.

Then, yesterday, as snow and freezing rain fell outside my doors and windows, clarity came to me that has put my quandary at ease. Though I have grown, immensely, since the time, in the early 1970s, when I chose to exit my fast track D.C. life; the starting point for “Hot Pants, Motorcyclesand K Street,” the voices of my mind/intellect and that of my heart are, still, in the process of expressing who I am as an integrated whole. Never quite arriving at completion.

The point of departure for that tale is a time and place where most of what could be seen of me was a performance, barely the true me at all. Yet it was and has become much of who and what I am, fundamentally, today. Further, I came to realize that while these two primary voices of me are expressive of who I am, at any given moment, they are, additionally, always in flux, a product of interactions with others, updated, moment by moment; the certain truth and clarity one moment, always, potentially, giving way to updated information that, then, creates of me, a new Self, in the next. This, then, is my current, greatest challenge in the writing of “Hot Pants, Motorcycles and K Street;” finding the true voice of me, the author.

Out of this awareness, I came to realize that my hope is that, your voices and Self, too, are always in motion. In this way we each stand firm in the knowing of who we are. Yet, also, open to the expansiveness we help bring forth in each other.

This, to me, is the “possible human” creating the “possiblesociety.” The potential integration of intellectual mind and heart in motion.