The Hunt

What a difficult thing to understand--a human heart! That being, itself imperceptible, causes such public obscurities. How mysterious the mechanism that, when given the same input, generates diverse output. How confounding the beings who contain it, they who are both different from and the same as one another. How fluid one such being is from moment to moment! How can you pin down a liquid?

Notice the discord between the heart and the mind. The mind investigates the heart, trying to discover the secrets for calibration. It sniffs along the trail of sentiments and values the heart leaves behind, but the heart is always one step ahead. The heart is even one step ahead of itself. It knows not where it is going and is often confused about where it is. It simply goes, tumbling along the course carved before it.

The mind is tenacious. It takes to scheming in order to flush the heart out. It plants mines of guilt ahead, trying to alter the heart's road. Perhaps it constructs barriers of composure where it thinks the heart will go. It may grab a shovel of austerity and dig a trench to lead it away. Alas, the mind is never as affective as it it presumes. The heart may be on a different path, at any moment vulnerable to being whisked away by a flood or tossed by an earthquake.

The confusion compounds when a pair of hearts and minds are chasing. Who can chart the course between two people? Who can lure another one to that hallowed common ground? Communication is like try to hit a moving target. Where are you heading, my breathing clay pigeon? I have you in my sights, but-curses!-I am on the move as well. Who can get a bead on a person? Is it any surprise that many give up the hunt and settle for shooting at shadows?

When you look at me, what do you see? I know you are hunting as well. Are you on my scent? While we perform this rite, who else is looking at us? Are we setting up to be blindsided? Might not one lose all semblance of balance trying to track you down? What a trecherous environment we find ourselves in!