For thousands of years in myths, legends, stories, fairy tales, and parables, the heart has been defined as the place from which our desires emerge and the place where our feelings reside. Our hearts are as individual and unique as our fingerprints. I cannot presume to know or understand the movements of your heart, nor you mine, but each of us must seek to discover and know the movements of our own hearts.
What we are about to discover is that our needs and desires are divinely and providentially linked. If we can get beyond our shallow and superficial wants, we discover that our deepest desires are for the things we legitimately need. Beneath the multitude of wants that plague the surface of our hearts, we desire good things for good reasons. These are the deepest desires of our hearts. They are good because in them we hope to better ourselves, the world in which we live, and others. They are the deepest desires of our hearts because their fulfillment leads us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves, and every being yearns to become all it is capable of being.
We would do well to learn to listen to these deepest desires of our hearts, and we should follow them wherever they lead us regardless of the cost or sacrifice involved.
Our fulfillment and happiness, our wholeness and holiness, depend upon us living out of the deepest desires of our hearts. Our deepest desires are directly linked to our legitimate needs. The careful pairing of our deepest desires and legitimate needs leads to the fulfillment of the human person—physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. The result is a life of unimagined balance and harmony, peace and prosperity.
Every culture has a saying similar to ours: Listen to your heart. It has become common and cliché, and yet, to ignore the wisdom it holds is to ignore your very self and the destiny you were created for.
Matthew Kelly
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