The Space Between Head and Heart

My latest column for the Times. Could certainly use your insight. Shoot me an email at leiboaz@gmail.com, please.

Advice columns are a dime a dozen, you'll doubtless agree. And they're deadly boring, mostly because Dear So and So never gives the useful advice you'd offer if only someone paid you scads of cash to advise those in unrelenting agony over the unfairness of life.

For example, here's how Dear Abby would read if I'd been given the assignment.

DEAR ABBY: I'm a 56-year-old man with a lifelong dilemma – I was born on Christmas Day. Yep, December 25th. For my whole life, year after year, my birthday has always been second banana, and, worse yet, I get cheated on gifts because my friends and family double up. Recently, I've decided to move my annual celebration to June 25th, which is my half birthday. My wife and nine kids say I'm being petty. What do you think? Sign me … TIRED OF SHARING A BIRTHDAY WITH JESUS

DEAR TIRED: Shut up. No one likes a whiner.

Admittedly, my column wouldn’t be renowned for its compassion and fellow feeling, but it would be entertaining as all get out. And it would solve one of the big problems with advice columns: They're boring as hell. The trouble is, my approach wouldn't solve the other problem I have with advice columns: The fact that their perspective is so narrow. Personally, I don’t want my problems solved by one middle-aged lady from Illinois. Nor do I want to go on TV and have my issues dealt with by an old white guy with a porn mustache and a voice that sounds like Huckleberry Hound.

Me, I believe there's wisdom in the multitudes, in having the minds of many solving the problems of one. You know, like those meetings you get sucked into at work, where 11 people sit around the big table crunching on Baked Lays and swilling Diet Cokes for an hour, "brainstorming" as a group until "the team" comes up with a workable solution?

Okay, you're right. Bad example. Those meetings inevitably suck. But I believe the principle of many helping one is sound and capable of giving birth to a new kind of advice column, a screed where (drum roll, please) …

You solve my problems!

Lucky for you people my whole life can be whittled down to precisely one problem, one pesky dilemma that has stood between me and happiness for a solid four decades now. And because I believe this problem is shared the world over, I'm willing to put it out there in all its glory, to see if you readers can solve it where the likes of Abby and Ann and Dr. Phil would surely fail.

Get your thinking caps on, because here goes.

DEAR READERS: I'm a 44-year-old man who's caught between two warring entities. On one side, there's my mind, my personal mental hard drive, storage system for facts and lessons and logic. It's home to everything I know. Standing opposed? That would be my heart, domicile of my emotions, home to joy and fear, love and guilt, and everything else I feel from one minute to the next.

They never seem to agree, these two. Doesn’t matter if I'm talking about staying on a diet, asking a woman out on a date, balancing the need to save money with the desire to shop, or getting out of bed to go to work on a Monday morning. My life very much resembles a perpetual standoff between mental Israel vs. emotional Palestine. My brain has a plan, a path to the right thing to do, meanwhile my heart has a set of feelings and wants that don't seem to subscribe to the mind's logic.

The question: How do you bring the two into balance? How do you get them to agree? Sign me, ONE CONFLICTED SOUL AMONG MANY.

Like I said, I know I'm not alone in this feeling, since I witness the same battle in others on an almost hourly basis. The examples are endless: The dieter who knows carrot cake is wrong, but cannot ward off the craving for a mouthful of frosting. The husband who knows that a stolen kiss – or worse – is cheating, but who gives in to the adrenalin of a momentary thrill. The drunk, the gambler, the addict, who knows down to the marrow that they're destroying their life, that they need help, that one more time is one more time too many, and yet fails to beat back their emotional demons, those feelings that say "yes" even when they know that "no" is the only acceptable answer.

Why do I see this conflict as essential, as the one battle that every thinking human being fights day after day?

Mostly because of how I define achieving maturity in a grown adult: It's owning the ability to consistently do what's necessary and what's right, even when that course of action is the last thing on Earth one feels like doing.

Not sure where you stand on having that ability, but me, I'd give myself a hard-earned B-minus. Hence, the need to put the question the masses. Besides believing in continually trying to grow up, I also believe in the wisdom of the many, the power of well-meaning folks around you to provide some insight you'd never glean on your own.

So have at it. Send me an answer at leiboaz@gmail.com. Doesn't matter what it is, only that you truly believe in it. I promise to print the best answers ASAP – and to do my best to take the best advice. Peace.