Thoughts on Deep Feelings and Rationale

As of late I have been reading and listening to lectures on the function of the Imagination as a part of Reason. The two as proposed by C.S. lewis were Divinely wed together in the beginning and only through recent developments (okay not so recent, it goes back to Plato) in modern society have the two been severed. He says some interesting things regarding those people who divorce imagination from Reason calling them "men without chests." They can figure it all out in their minds and on their black boards and graph paper but in the end they have no knowledge of the "deep" things such as glory, honor, valour, beauty, love and the like. They are without chests, men who for all their training in the intellect have not trained their hearts to "feel" appropriately.

I remember having a conversation a long time ago with a friend of mine about living life and making decisions. I proposed that mankind was made to think with more than his brain and he replied witih a certain degree of dissapproval that feelings are irrelevant to rationale. We think with our brains, we feel with our hearts. But we should always do what we think and not what we feel. O, I don't know friend. I remember thinking to myself, how can you live if all you do is let your reason take the wheel while you stuff desire, emotion, imagination, and feelings in the trunk? (This never actualy happens though it is often claimed to be the way to go) There is a reason men have done great and noble things in the past, there is a reason that men found it a worthy cause to end slavery even at the cost of War, that heroes are forged from battles and brotherhood brings tears, that memorials and love songs exist. A life without the deep things is not a life at all, but a poor and empty shell of something that was meant to be beautiful. There is a reason, but this reason was not so reasonable to my friend.

Let me say this. If you live according to your reason alone and keep imagination forever stashed away in the closet you will never truly live, at least not as you should. You will never do anything that sacrifices your greatest interest, puts you in harms way, sets your face against the storm or makes you swim against the tide. Because after all, there is no "Reason" to do something because it is honoroable, noble, or worthy. Right?

Well yeah, unless "Reason" is more than just your reason.