Month: November 2019

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Follow Your Heart’s GPS

UnknownBrian Doyle wrote a wonderful book called The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart. It was in this book that I learned a hummingbird, with its rapid heartbeat and two-year lifespan, has the same number of heartbeats a human has in a lifetime, and that at 5’ long, 4’ wide, 5’ high, weighing 400 pounds, the heart of the blue whale is the largest on the planet. The human heart weighs in at 10-12 ounces and is about the size of a fist.

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, what the heart can hold.” So said Zelda Fitzgerald whose heart, one imagines, experienced the gamut of emotions in her extraordinary and ultimately tragic lifetime.

Gratitude and wonder hold hands in the heart, wide-eyed and a little gap-mouthed, ready to be delighted and surprised at any moment. Stress and tension, handcuffed together, frequently lurk uninvited. Forgiveness fights fires. Grief, normally in chambers, engulfs when awoken. Favorite people wander the corridors, places and things take up space in different rooms. And yet, as Zelda suggested, the heart’s ability to expand and hold more is unknown but likely vaster than a blue whale’s heart.

When alert and not operating by rote, the heart possesses the extraordinary vision of a raptor seeing things in focus far and wide, making connections like the way the forces of darkness often push the better angels to prevail, and how the persecuted sometimes carve the path to compassion and change. It has the ability to hear like a moth, to float and flutter with the same grace. The heart feels best with arms widespread, guileless, loyal and loving as a child or a pet.

It truly has a mind of its own, which is in constant communication with the brain in our heads. When heart and head are in sync, we have greater mental clarity and intuitive ability. When the heart experiences emotions like compassion and appreciation, its rhythm becomes more coherent and harmonious. So next time you feel adrift, take a quick minute or two to listen to and follow your heart’s wise lead. She’ll get you where you need to be.

 

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Presence

woodsOne of my uncle’s used to repeat some of his phrases, a diction tic that was endearing. Several years ago, driving my mom and I around San Francisco, he said to her, “Every day something new, right Mary?” And before she had a chance to respond, “Every day something new, right Mary?” I think about that often, because it still makes me smile, and because the simple truth of the statement applies, well, every day.

Over the years, I’ve walked the woods near work more times than I can count. I’ve been in them in all seasons, sometimes almost daily for weeks at a time. Recently, on a moody, gray autumn day, I sought those woods mid-morning to ground me, to bring me back to the present.

I had been in them at first morning light less than 24 hours before. In the short time since, the ground of the clifftop had become filled with tripping hazards, acorns tossed about like marbles on the floor, the walking path freshly blanketed with newly fallen leaves that hid some of the jutting stones. I was forced to pay attention to each step, slowing my pace more than I liked. Deep in the woods, the reckless wind, barely a whisper the previous day, rubbed two trees together, playing them like out of tune string instruments accompanied by a maraca rhythm of rustling leaves.

I entered the woods with a heart and mind as restless as the wind. Regardless of the wisdom of Rilke’s words, it can be hard to love and live the questions now, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Back at my desk, a few hours later, the rains came. The river that shone with glittering sunlight earlier was a blurry slow-moving slate gray, the George Washington Bridge a watermark of itself. And nothing was any clearer in my head or heart, but it no longer mattered. Every day there is something new, every hour, every minute.