You’ve heard people call others “hard headed,” and you’ve also heard them call others “soft in the head.” Which is better?

Hard headedness refers to someone who has a rigid, stubborn mindset. These people are hard to teach, inflexible, and don’t wish to consider such “soft” tactics as compromise, open-mindedness, or even simple acceptance or forgiveness. If circumstances don’t fit their mental picture of how things should be, they suffer. And usually, the people around them suffer too!

“Soft in the head,” although not used too much colloquially nowadays, refers to someone who is showing signs of mental illness, dementia or even retardation. The image is a counterpoint to the idea that being mentally “sharp,” rather than “soft,” is a good thing. “His mind is like a steel trap,” is used as a compliment. Bob or Doug once said (I can’t remember which character said it, but it was a funny line from the comedy album “Bob and Doug’s Great White North”), “his head is like a bowling ball with the three holes filled with dog dung.” Now that’s an interesting juxtaposition of something hard and something soft!

Psychically speaking, it really is better to have a head like a rubber ball than an egg. Drop an egg on the floor, and it goes splat. Drop a rubber ball on the floor, and it bounces around in different directions. Life experience, which is often painful, serves as the “floor” from which we must choose whether to bounce away from, or just lie there in a broken mess.

You won’t learn anything about the art of living if you live like Humpty-Dumpty, because, like all the King’s horses and men, no one will be able to put you back together again. You have to do it yourself. So adopting an attitude of mental rigidity simply endangers you. You will be less adaptable to the inevitable changes of life, you will be less able to learn, you will be that more fragile.

Instead, cultivate a mental softness. After all, most of what our brain is (and all physical, 3-D matter as well), is just empty space…any physicist will tell you that. Let your mind be soft, your heart open, and let learning and wisdom rush in to those wonderful empty spaces you have. Cultivate the habit of thinking and saying the words “maybe,” and “perhaps,” and “what if?” in your daily language. Try “I wonder,” instead of “I know.”

In this way, you will not only have a soft mind, but a softer heart and a brighter, smiling aura.

Good luck!