“An open mind often leads to an open heart.”

 

Lately, the quote above has been on my mind.  I would like to add my two cents’ worth to it.  We should go beyond opening our hearts, for the act of opening oneself to the world can be an isolated and subjective affair.  Once we expose our thoughts and feelings, there is no telling if we keep the openness or invite animosity so as to formulate an excuse to close ourselves again.  An open heart is from where truth and magnanimity emanate.  And here is the crux of the matter – here is the reason we can’t leave ourselves exposed for too long: It leaves us vulnerable.  We are quick to accept the truth in other people, to promptly keep their thoughts in neat little boxes of generalizations and stereotypes.  But are we as quick to accept the truth in ourselves?  As we go through life, it is easy to impose our own values on the opinions we hear, on the minds we encounter.  To invest in an objective view of the world is almost impossible, I know, for the standards upon which we judge people are the self-same standards we have held so close to our hearts and heads since we were young.  With the passage of time, though, this subjective exercise is bound to give us an objective interpretation of reality.  But this undertakes a deeper probing than what we are usually comfortable with.

 

Many, though, are not capable.  I have learned as much.  They are content to breeze through the world, hearing other people’s thoughts without really listening, feeling other people without really touching them.  They look, but they do not see.  They talk, but what they say is beyond comprehension, for they are too immersed in their own thoughts and feelings that they alienate that part of themselves that should be shared by all.  Does this sound familiar?  We find them all around us.  The lawmakers with their rhetoric, the indignant masses with their transplanted but implausible concepts of equality, the religious with their vague promises of paradise, and the celebrities with their self-serving lies.  They surround themselves in pretense and have lies to keep them warm at night.  They use other people to further their own motives, sometimes killing the innocent if they have to.  Why people do these things is beyond me.  How they can live without so much as a speck of guilt in their conscience is something I have yet to figure out.

 

The signs of the times call for a change of heart.  We must listen to that innermost voice so as not to miss out on the opportunity to explore other ways of being.  Who knows, this innermost voice may be our eye-opener, our savior in this turbulent world.  In life, it is often too easy to render surface-level opinions of what one sees or hears rather than explore.  Either this could mean fear of the unknown, dislike for change, being set in one’s ways or beliefs, or even being opinionated.  To be open-minded does not mean that one always has to agree with what one sees or hears.  It is a means of opening up our minds and hearts to something new, to something wonderful, to something peaceful…that could eventually lead us to a whole new world.