We
have one physical heart, beating in our chests to our own funky little beat
that lets us know we are physically alive and present in the universe. But,
somewhere deep in our soul, in that dusty cupboard that contains all that is
the ethereal “Us”, is the collection of our other “hearts”, the metaphoric ones that connect us emotionally to the
rest of the universe. Yes, I said hearts,
plural. I am a firm believer that most human beings are so emotionally
complicated that we possess many hearts that serve many purposes.
We
are born with this cosmic jar of hearts within us, this capacity for
potentially limitless love. None of these hearts are labeled to begin with,
but, over time, they are labeled and given away. The very first heart we label,
even as babies, is the heart we label for our mothers. There are those who
believe that this is something that perhaps takes place even before we are
born, as we reside comfortably inside of her, listening to her heart beat,
feeling her emotions as our emotions, hearing her voice, and maybe even some of
her thoughts. She lays claim to that very first heart. And then our father
claims the next one, as he holds us close and we hear his voice, that familiar
voice that we may remember hearing before we were born. We somehow recognize
that he is part of what created us, and give him a heart of his very own.
If
we have siblings, and we are close to them, we give them their own hearts as
well. If we have a close relationship with our grandparents, as I did with my
Grandmother, they are given their own heart, nurtured by stories and warm hugs.
If we are not, then they all become part of the “family” heart, the heart that reminds us that we are connected to
these people. This is where we come from, where we share some commonality,
being blood or otherwise.
There
are times when it feels like we are not connected to these people, that they
have not earned the right to a heart. We pull away. We disconnect. This is not
because there is no love, or that we have taken back the heart we have gave
them. It is just far too painful to that heart to be in close emotional
proximity to that person. It is sad when I hear that someone hates a member of
their family, when really, it is the pain they bring, not the person
themselves. We shove them into a tiny corner of the family heart because it
easier to just leave them there and ignore them rather than try and sort out
the pain.
Somewhere
in the happiness and sadness of growing up, we finally allow ourselves to pick
a heart of our very own, the heart of self-love.
We quietly put our names on it in pencil, erase it a million times as we go
through phases of self-loathing over the years. It can become dusty and a bit
cracked from the harsh internal dialogue we inflict upon ourselves from time to
time. But then we have one of those day or weeks that make us feel good to be
us, and we dust that heart off, patch it up and polish it until it shines. This
is why those with a healthy (not narcissistic) sense of self-love seem to shine
from within. They maintain and care for their hearts.
Somewhere
in here, we also create our “spiritual
heart”, the heart that we give to the Divine in our lives. We may label it “God”
or “Goddess”, or the names of hundreds of Gods and Goddesses. We may label it
simply as “that thing that is greater than I am.” This is the heart, the love
we send to that Divine spirit that we feel present in the universe, that we
feel connected to. This heart is our connection, our hotline to Spirit when we
ask for guidance and receive that Divine love back in return. Some find this
heart early in life. Others develop it much later. I feel like it exists in
some form in all of us, as we all contain that Divine spark of life.
We
also (hopefully) at some point in growing up, develop what I can the “humanity heart”, the heart that sees and
understands that we are all one community on this planet. This is the heart that
aches when we see suffering in the world, and becomes outraged at war and the
mistreatment of others. This heart moves us to help out a stranger. The
humanity heart aches when it sees those commercials with puppies and kittens in
cages. This is the heart that says, “I do not know you, but you are a part of
me.”
Those
we care about, that we make an actual part of our lives, earn hearts of their
own as well. We have a general heart labelled “friends” for those who we interact with and have come to care
about. There are friends who become so close that we add them to the heart that
I like to call “the chosen family heart”, those individuals that we develop a
deep, lasting connection with. If we are very fortunate, we have a handful of
people connected to this heart, an emotional support system so strong that it
carries us through the dark periods of our lives.
The
strongest heart we give away and carry within us is the heart we give to our
child (or fur baby, as I love my animals as if they were my own children). The “parental” heart is made of molten iron,
encased in some strange rubber material. It is capable of enormous amount of
love yet able to withstand enormous amounts of abuse. Anyone who has every
raised a toddler or a teenager can attest to this. They do things, say things
that would break an ordinary heart. This heart looks beyond all of this and
still is able to love this being completely, even if they do not like the
things that they do or say. This heart still hold firm to that connection, even
when the child is pushing away with all their might. This heart can look past
atrocities that some children grow to become, and yet still say, “this person is still my child, and I
still love them.” This is a heart that is given and can never be destroyed, not
through death or the end of the universe. Nothing can destroy the parental
heart. The parental heart is the strongest heart because it truly has to be.
The
most fragile heart we give to others is the one labelled “the intimate heart”. For some, it is crafted
of finely spun glass. We hand it to the person who we choose to love on a most
personal, intimate level. We label this person as our soul mate, our
significant other. These are not rendezvous or simple affairs, or superficial
sexual relationships we tell ourselves are really, but really only serve some
random purpose. These are the people we connect to on the deepest, most
intimate level, well beyond sex and into the realm of the spiritual. We see
them as the other half of ourselves, and share our lives with them on a
profoundly personal level. The hearts we hand them are etched with their names,
and is theirs to keep forever, even when the relationship ends. This is why
these people seem to leave an imprint on us years after they are no longer a
part of our lives, because they still carry with them a part of us with their
name on it. They still have possession of one of our hearts. Even if they
shatter it with a hammer in a million pieces, those million fragments still
exist. We think of them from time to time when something catches our attention,
a song, a scent or something that reminds us of them, reminders that there is
someone out there carrying one of our hearts in their heart.
There
is a poem by e.e. cummings that goes:
“i
carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my
heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i
go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by
only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no
fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no
world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and
it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and
whatever a sun will always sing is you
here
is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here
is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and
the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher
than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and
this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i
carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)”
I
think that is what that poem means, that we give away all these hearts,
sometimes with reason and sometimes foolishly. And that these individuals carry
these hearts in their own hearts, much the same as the ones we are given we
carry in our own. It connects us to them no matter where we go or what we do in
life. We all walk around with this heart that is actually a container for
multitude of hearts we carry within us, some we created ourselves, and some
that were gifted to us by others.
If
we stop looking at our heart as a singularity, and start seeing it rather as a
container for an infinite number of hearts, life would change. We would
suddenly realize the tremendous capacity we have for love. We would come to the
understanding that we do not have to love one over or instead of another. We
could stop agonizing over the damage that one heart has sustained through
someone’s carelessness, and saying we will never love again because we would realize
that we have other hearts to share. Having a broken heart would no longer stop
the world from turning because we would know that, though that one is damaged,
we have a shiny new one ready to share with someone more worthy, someone who
will hopefully tend to it with more care. I give you my heart, and if you do
not handle it with care, if you break it, you do not get another one, and my
life moves on because…
I
carry far more than your heart with me. I carry an infinite number of hearts in
my heart….
