The heart must be an important organ because my dog-eared dictionary has allocated more than two pages for it. The first entry says, “Heart is the organ in your chest which pumps blood through your body.”
I read in a novel, “Her cheeks were hot and her heart was pounding.” Sometimes, your heart begins to race. When you grow old, you are likely to suffer from a heart condition or attack. When you go to a doctor, he will check your breathing and heart rate.
Sometimes, the heart is more than an organ because it is the part of you that feels strong emotions and feelings. If you hear some extremely bad news, it will break your heart. Some people leave the country to settle down in down under, but they do so with a heavy heart. Most of us have to deal with affairs of the heart very cautiously.
Sometimes, you may meet a man or woman with a heart of gold. They are very kind souls. A news bulletin said a son had killed his mother. He must have had a heart of stone. When you are in love, you follow your heart rather than your head.
In a way, hearts have astonishing lives. There are faint and stout hearts. There are also open hearts and closed hearts; clean hearts and mean hearts. Some hearts are as light as feathers while other hearts are as heavy as lead.
Lovers’ hearts beat as one while other hearts are lonely hunters. Very few people have whole hearts, others have broken hearts. If your heart is pierced by Cupid, you are in love. No wonder you will feel like a singing bird.
Blood-pumping machine
Can the heart have a personality when it is only a blood-pumping machine? Sometimes, it can be replaced by a gadget made of plastic. Even our forefathers believed that the heart had a life of its own. That must be true because it works continuously even when you sleep. Sometimes, you can hear your own heartbeat, especially when you get excited.
Since the heart is in the middle of your body, it has become a metaphor for the centre of anything. If you kill the heart, the body will die. If you see your lover with another person, your heart will flutter. You will feel the pounding of your own heart. Is it the heart that sends the first signal of love through the body? Probably not because psychologists say it starts with the brain which analyses what you see or hear. The excitement is felt in the adrenal gland. Poets, however, are not ready to accept such a view. They think that the heart is a metaphor for romantic love.
The heart has enriched the English language. Those who speak from the bottom of their hearts do so with great sincerity and strength of feeling. A literary critic says Celine Dion sang straight from her heart. Some old people who are young at heart marry pretty girls.
If you suddenly feel a moment of fear or excitement, your heart will skip a beat. You are lucky if you happen to marry someone after your own heart. Sometimes, you lose your heart to someone you meet. Later, you might realise that you had been infatuated. If you really feel sympathy towards someone, your heart will bleed.
One day, I took a close relative to a cardiologist when she complained that her heart was beating out of rhythm. While taking an echocardiography, she saw her own heart on the little monitor. She saw it beating, pulsing and valves flapping and closing. It was really hard work for the heart. After the incident I began to watch my own heart closely with growing respect. It may sound pretty silly because there are people who are not bothered about their hearts.
Occasionally, we hear of heart transplants. Claire Sylvia, the heart-lung transplant recipient suddenly began craving for new kinds of food as well as experiencing unfamiliar emotions. In dreams, she had conversations with her donor which allowed her to locate her parents. Another eight-year-old girl received the heart of a murdered child. After the transplant, she started having nightmares about the man who had killed her donor. The details she had given in therapy sessions helped the police to nab the murderer.
It might seem as though the brain and the heart operate independently in pursuit of disparate missions. The heart pumps blood throughout the body providing a life-sustaining supply of oxygen and nutrients to every major organ.
The brain is the command centre, controlling thoughts, speech and functions. Scientists, however, are increasingly discovering a close connection between the two. Clinical evidence is mounting that cardiovascular heath affects cognitive health, suggesting that preventive efforts for one translate to the other.
Romantic love
The heart works as hard as the leg muscles of a sprinter. It takes a lot of force to move your blood around your body, and that is why a strong, healthy heart is so important. The heart which is a muscle has twice the power of the leg muscle of someone sprinting.
The heart has taken on diverse meanings across different cultures. In the West, the relationship between the heart and romantic love is centuries old. In fact, the heart was once considered the seat of the passions.
You will hardly find a love song that does not mention the word heart. From “My heart will go on and on” to “Don’t break my heart” we express our romantic emotions – our desires, satisfaction, falling in and out of love, heartbreak, betrayal and disappointment – through the images of the heart.
When I was about to finish the column, I heard Celine Dion’s mellifluous voice resonating in the background:
“Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more, you open the door
And you’re here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on …”
