Head v. Heart

"Think of a time when your emotions (your heart) conflicted with what you know (your head)."

I immediately thought uh, boys. Then I quickly thought that was dumb, for obvious cliched reasons. Then I thought, well, college and majors. That's the big one for me right now. But as of right now, there is still no resolution between my math/science brain and my creative writing/music brain that experts say aren't supposed to live inside the same head. Or else. I'm quickly learning just how difficult that "or else" can be.

So in an effort to answer the prompt with a resolution and not just circuitous "I don't know, but maybe..." Here is how I have handled this conflict before, in a high stress environment, when a decision had to be made in the moment:

Before I was Kat Shaw. Before the blog, the self-confidence, self-identity, and forward thinking, I had to learn who "Kat Shaw" was. This was one of those learning experiences.

Poetry Club Symposium, sophomore year.

The spotlight was too bright. The room was too full. The pool of peers, and ultimate judges, was too deep and dark. The fire and brimstone performance before me, preaching about struggle and hurt I was too young and sophomoric to understand, left the stage smoldering. A clammy Katherine Shaw stepped up to share her little poem about "nice guys."

Two stanzas in I got burned. The words were clinging to my tongue, the electrical synapses in my brain were static. The next line wouldn't come for the life of me.

Head: nothing.
Heart: run.

So after playing the part of the deer in headlights for a few moments, that's just what I did. I ran backstage and frantically asked my fellow poets what the next line was to my poem. Of course, they didn't know. It was my poem.

Heart: You're done for. Prepare to be the Point Loma, not so poetic, pariah. I hope you have a bag for your head.

Head finally decided to join the conversation after being fashionably late.

Head: Go back out there. Take a deep breath. Ask the audience to start over. They got out of class for this, they won't say no.

With Heart kicking and screaming inside my chest, I stepped back out onto the stage. It was considerably cooler after being stagnant so long.

Miraculously, the world did not end.

But my poem did :)

~Kat

P.S. If you're having any internal conflicts like this, and your internal organs are conversational like mine are, I really found this prompt beneficial to look back on how I handled things in the past to help how I will handle them now. I still don't know whether to follow my heart or my head with something as big as my future career and the college to get me there, but I can assure you, you all will be the first to know when I do.