Heart has its reason which reason knows nothing of

(This was one of my essays for entrance into college. I found this on my PC, thought I'd share it.)

Blaise Pascal stated one of the greatest mysteries of human kind when he made the above statement. Despite being a physicist and a mathematician, Pascal, a man driven by logic, was keen to notice one of the greatest things about human behaviour, for which there is no logic. The human heart has emotions and reactions to situations that sometimes no logic or rule can explain. Scientists have tried for years to crack open the shell of human emotion but have not even merely scratched the surface.

The decision for our choices need not always be driven by calculating the risks or the possible consequences, sometimes it is merely a choice determined by the heart. Why did Edward VIII choose to abdicate the throne and marry Wallis Simpson? Why would someone choose to fall in love with someone and not anybody else? We can create all sorts of tests looking into the bio-physical, the bio-chemical even the psychological, we will still not be able to come up with a concrete logic driven reason as to the choices made by the heart.

It is the heart that can sometimes over-rule all logic and give us the shot in the arm to go the extra mile despite odds and public opinion. Christopher Columbus would not have discovered the American continent if he were to be driven by logic. All logic told him to turn the ship around and head back to Spain, but it was the desire that drove him to keep going ahead. If Thomas Edison, going by the track record of so many failures before discovering the right filament for the light bulb, had trusted logic and not his will to believe that something is there at the end of the tunnel, we would all probably still be reading by candlelight. The above cases are just a few where the going with a gut instinct has triumphed. There are still cases where ignoring the facts and track record has resulted in dire consequences. Sometimes, it is always a safer bet going with scientific logic. But what sets those men or women apart from others are those who can judge when to make choices based on logic and when to ignore all of it and merely trust in the path shown by the heart.