There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. -G.K. Chesterton, essayist and novelist (1874-1936)
Beauty and horror and other visceral experiences usually take this route. No filtering intellect stands in the way of their impact. They slam you in the chest and the gut and it's all pure, raw feeling.
Other experiences might meander through the brain for a while before evoking emotion, depending on who you are. Some people have trained themselves to instantly block and surround experience with rational thought, and shape it in their minds before sending it along to the heart. This is a useful skill, I think. It averts a lot of heartache. It makes disappointments more bearable. The brainy filter can rosy it up, make the glass half full, reason and temper and spin.
Once something circumvents the filter, though, it's much harder to bring it back to the intellect and shape the emotional response, like a plastic surgeon nipping and tucking and carving and smoothing flesh to make it more pleasing. The jolt to the heart stays there like a thrumming echo, and all the reason in the world can't drown that out. But time and practice and patience can help it fade to a tickly vibration of memory, less insistent but still instructive. Unchanged and unfiltered and whole and real, but folded and tucked out of the way, like a 10-year-old love letter.
Posted by thevieve at August 17, 2005 9:41 AM