The Significance of the Heart

Think about all of the common phrases of speech that we have adopted into our everyday lexicon which somehow relate to the human heart: "That person has heart," "I gave you my heart," "Home is where the heart is," "She broke my heart," "I feel it in my heart," etc. Why have we appropriated the human heart, an organ without any capacity for thought or feeling, as a vessel to symbolize our intense emotions, chief among which are feelings of passion, love, and despair? When you think about the logic objectively and interpret the diction literally, it seems preposterous that we would so casually associate the heart with our feelings, yet we do all the time. Why do we? I don't have a real answer, and quite frankly, I'm not sure if there is one. I have speculations as to why I think we have characterized the heart in such a light, but I think any attempt to elucidate the inquiry is less an objective pursuit of reason and more an exercise in subjective interpretation of the casual manner in which we dispense such expressions regarding the heart in association with intense emotion.

On average, your heart beats 70-80 times per minute. For those who love mental arithmetic, do the math: 70 beats per minute, times 60 minutes in an hour, times 24 hours a day, times 365 days a year, times an average lifespan of 75 years: that is more than 2.5 billion times throughout an average life that a heart will beat. But how do we draw connections from the heart's tremendously incredible physiological capacity to it somehow serving as a housing in which we store intense emotions? I speculate that before advancements in science, when our understanding of human anatomy was rather rudimentary, people believed that the heart was directly responsible for how we felt. Think about when you become excited or scared and your heart beats faster; to this same end, people used to believe that the changing pace of one's heartbeat was an activator of certain feelings and emotions. Over time, increased understanding of what the heart's function actually is rectified these inaccurate beliefs. In the 17th century, William Harvey published his On the Motion of the Heart and Blood, in which he asserts that the heart is responsible for circulating blood throughout our arteries and body. Prior to Harvey's treatise, it was believed that the circulation of blood was a two-part process, venous and vital. The vital was blood and spirits that flowed from the heart and was distributed as life force throughout the body. Harvey points out with disdain, however, in his treatise that, “The heart, it is vulgarly said, is the fountain and workshop of the vital spirits, the centre from which life is dispensed to the several parts of the body.” It was over a period of time following Harvey's publication of his treatise that fundamental beliefs about the heart's function altered, but it is readily apparent in the juxtaposition of these two strains of thought that the physiological and figurative had unequivocally collided. 

I believe that our contemporary lexicon, which incorporates casual phrases associating the heart with emotion, is a reflection of the original beliefs surrounding the heart's function in our bodies dating back to Harvey's era. Furthermore, I think the associative relationship of our two primary parts, the brain and heart, is paramount to spiritual peace and self cultivation. Even if the separation only occurs in one place, our mind, the appropriation of our heart as a figurative symbol that represents our intense capacity for emotion allows for a symbiotic development between our life blood (heart) and our rational processing (mind). The heart is where we store our intense emotions, our strong feelings of passion and despair. I think that's why we so commonly say things like, "She broke my heart," and also why all our Valentine's are accompanied by pictures of hearts. 

When we're severely afflicted by something someone does or says to us, we feel it to the "core." In a sense, I think this refers to our heart, our vessel in which we store the different things that make us feel extreme happiness or pain. Trying experiences, I feel, harden your heart over time. When you encounter situations that defeat your resolve, you retract and naturally become more reclusive by building up figurative layers of insulation in which you can ensconce yourself. Maybe you've lost somebody close to you and the fear of a sudden reoccurring jarring experience precludes you from opening up to others. Maybe you fell in love with someone, someone for whom you truly felt love and amorousness, but she eventually forsook endearment in favor of pragmatism even though you still sided with romantic idealism. Maybe you've been working tremendously hard at your own physical capacity, but then someone who is a supposed training expert says something disparaging that subverts the positive beliefs you hitherto held about your development. Hindsight, like that old adage goes, is always 20/20. It's natural, I think, to spend an unhealthy amount of time ruminating on the past, dissecting your own decisions and scrutinizing the choices you made. As a result, it's easy to adopt an unnecessary amount of guilt and burden, which we then wear upon ourselves like a weighted vest, constantly carrying this heavy baggage wherever we go. I used to get so exhausted at the end of the day, looking forward to the earliest acceptable time at which I could go to sleep and thereby close myself off from everything. When you wear this figurative vest around yourself, you inadvertently push others away, retreating behind your own layers of self constructed insulation. 

Think about the people in your life who you consider the strongest: how much does the amount of weight they can move actually factor into your perception of their strength? Strength, I think, has less to do with the amount of weight one can move; rather, I think a more accurate measure is the extent to which one's resolve can be stretched. I believe we all have our own personal barometers, and the scale of our personal barometer is directly contingent upon our own experiences and wisdom that we accrue. There is no growth in comfort, no growth within our self-perceived limit of our own personal barometer. The only way to extend the scale of that measurement is to surpass the limit you heretofore thought achievable. But I've learned that you can't attain those results by yourself. When you push others away and seclude yourself, you do nothing more than illustrate your own inherent weakness. Why else would you want to shield yourself from others, save for the fact that you're afraid of scrutiny? Strength is as much about your willingness to stretch your resolve as it is about having the humility to recognize and openly acknowledge that you need help to do so. It is difficult to release your inhibitions and dissolve your apprehension, but someone who I sincerely admire observed that when you do, you allow your heart to be opened up to something new, to sensations and circumstances not yet experienced. 

Harvey and scientific proof since the assertions in his treatise, have indubitably proven the genuine function of the heart, thereby rendering any romantic notions about its capacity for feeling ridiculous. But our everyday vernacular surrounding motions of the heart indicate, at least subconsciously I think, our desire to still acknowledge the distinction between our logical mind and passionate heart. If nothing else, think of the difference metaphorically: our hearts beat continuously without fail, never faltering by choice, persisting unerringly like a metronome; even in the face of unfathomable difficulty, our hearts do not stop. Our minds, in contrast, have the personal agency of choice, the power of free will. When you endure a trial that tests your personal limit, you retain the option to choose for yourself as to when you will desist. Your heart will never forsake you, your body will never stop, which means that a choice will always be left for you to decide. This symbiotic relationship between your mind and body becomes clearer for an ephemeral period after you exercise; like a medium interacting with spirits to bridge the gap between life and the regions beyond it, the cloud of murkiness between your heart and mind is elucidated during periods of intense stress. When nine out of the ten voices in your head urge you to desist, plead with you to give chase, it becomes so easy to acquiesce. But if you attune your senses sharply enough, you can discern one small whisper among the cacophony of indistinguishable noise. You can hear this whisper spurning you on, compelling you to continue. This feeling, this sensation you encounter in various life experiences is not always justifiable in a rational, logical sense; instead you chalk it up to something else-you say, "I can't explain it, I just feel it in my heart." A significant notion of strength becomes illustrated when you let go of, "what if..." and yield to this sensation felt in your heart. 

So, why do we associate the heart with human feelings? I really don't know, and no part of the aforementioned I think elucidates that inquiry. There are much better intellectual inspections of the ways in which we commonly adopt illogical language regarding the heart; the abovementioned is merely one lay person's conjecture. I do love this quote, though, from the Chinese Book of Poetry: "In his heart is love, why not admit it? He stores it in his heart, when could he forget it?"