Stories by Preetam

It was never about right or wrong. It was about me.

“Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Alright then… why do people say think from the heart when all the thinking actually happens in the brain?”

Yeah. That one hits like a late-night thought spiral you didn’t sign up for. Because honestly, we’ve all grown up hearing it – “Follow your heart.” “Listen to your heart.” “Trust what your heart says.”

Here’s the thing – centuries ago, people noticed how the heart reacts strongly to feelings. It races when you’re excited, it pounds when you’re in love, it sinks when you’re hurt. So they assumed the heart must be where feelings live.

Even after science proved it’s the brain doing all the actual work, language didn’t bother to update itself. Heart just became a poetic shortcut for emotion, empathy, and intuition.

So when someone says “think from the heart,” what they really mean is “listen to your emotions” or “don’t let logic drown out what you feel.”

For the longest time, I didn’t really get this.

I was a logic-first kind of person. Structured. Calculated. If it didn’t make sense on paper, it didn’t make sense at all.

Then life did what it does best – threw a curveball that logic alone couldn’t untangle.

It came in the form of a choice.

Option one: Choose growth. Say yes to something that looked perfect on paper. A clean step up. More responsibility. More shine. But there was a catch. To get there, I’d have to take credit for work that wasn’t mine alone. I’d have to push the very people who built everything with me into a corner – get them labelled as underperformers – maybe even ease them out – just so I could move up faster.

Option two: Do the opposite. Stand with them. Slower growth. Less visibility. But I’d be able to look them in the eye the next day. More importantly, I’d be able to look at myself in the mirror.

Brain: “This is how the world works. Be smart.”

Heart: “And what’s the point of winning if you lose yourself doing it?”

I weighed everything, made lists, spun it in a hundred different ways. But one night, during yet another midnight overthinking spiral, Meera said, “You already know what you’re going to do. You’re just hoping someone else says it first.”

And she was right.

I chose the second option. The slower one. The quieter one. But the one I could live with.

It didn’t come with applause or a highlight reel. But it came with peace. The kind that sits quietly with you at the end of the day.

I won’t pretend that choosing the heart suddenly made everything perfect. It didn’t. My growth was slower, opportunities came a little later, and some people called it a bad move. But here’s the thing – I slept better. I didn’t have to carry someone else’s loss as the price of my win.

And it wasn’t the last time I had to make a choice like this.

There were other moments too. The kind where people looked me in the eye and said, “You won’t make it.”

No certifications. No fancy checklist. Just me. And their version of who they thought I was. If I’d listened to them – if I’d let my heart get weighed down by their doubt – I’d have been stuck exactly where they left me.

But that time, it was my brain that stepped in. The logical part of me that said, choose yourself first. Believe in yourself. You can do this. And I did. I didn’t need anyone else to believe in me. I just needed me.

And that’s when I realised – it’s never just heart or just brain. It’s knowing when to let which one lead.

These days, when I’m faced with big decisions, I don’t silence my brain. I just let my heart pull up a chair too. Logic maps the path, but emotion reminds me why I’m walking it. And honestly, I’d rather walk slower with a clear conscience than run fast with a heavy one.

So no, the heart doesn’t actually think. But sometimes, it knows. And the brain doesn’t always have to be cold – sometimes it’s the voice that says you’ve got this. It’s the balance between the two that builds who we become.

The real strength isn’t choosing between heart and brain – it’s learning to trust both.