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Our heart is the seat of all emotions

We often hear these phrases concerning the human heart: wholehearted, with all my heart, heart desire, take to heart, or hurt at heart, feeling sickened at heart, cold hearted and so many many other phrases or expressions involving the human heart. But why is the heart used so often in describing so many different situations?  Because our heart is more than just a pump that keeps our blood flowing, but it keeps us warm, and responsible for our very life. 

It is the seat of motivation, of all of our activities and attitudes, joys, loves, feelings, enjoyments, moral character, speech, conduct, all emotions. It is what causes us to express laughter, enthusiasm, courage and everything that we do with our bodies. A whole hearted person is complete, fervent, supportive, has a keen interest in wanting to do something well.

Here is an example to show how our hearts is indeed the seat of our desires and motives.  A couple of years ago I heard about a middle aged woman who needed a heart transplant and was giving the heart of a young 19 year old football player and motor cycle rider. He died in an accident on his way to a football game. But he stopped to eat at a fast food restaurant before going to the game. Unfortunately he died before getting there. His heart was transplanted into this middle aged woman. When she came out of surgery, to the surprise of her doctor and family she asked for french fries and hamburger and started talking about football!

A transplanted heart still keeps its original desires.

This woman had never had any interest in football or cared about fast foods before ever in her life. Understandable her doctor and family were shocked when they realized that her new heart was full of desires different from what she had or even what she was. It was the desires of the dead young man whom heart she now had to live with. His heart was into fast foods and football like most 19 year olds, and it was very interesting that his heart survived with all his desires impact and now operating in another person.

It wouldn’t be surprising either if she later started actually playing football, since this was what the young man’s heart was into, and now operating in her. This would indeed take a lot of courage to go through with these new desires in her new heart. It is funny imagining a middle aged woman playing football. Maybe later on the heart was trained to fully adapt to her own desires if possible. I never heard anything more about what happened later on with this story.  But it really shows how our heart operates. 

 Our heart is the finall decision maker 

The heart makes decisions, either for good or bad. Our eyes take pictures of things around us, sound and information goes through our ears, our mind and brain take all this information, assimilate it and pass all this on to the heart.  It makes the final decision, moving the body to act on whatever direction it gives. So in reality we “see and listen” with our heart, the eyes and ears are only channels to this important decision making organ. That is the reason why a blind man can say: “I see”, or a deaf person can communicate back even in sign language “Yes I hear what you say”. Their hearts see and hear.

Both persons blind or deaf if they were born that way have never seen light, or heard a single sound or whisper.  A blind person can’t see the beauty of things including other people around them, or the deaf hear their voices, or music. Yet some of them become singers, musicians, dancers, communicators, all because their courageous enthusiastic hearts are into what they do. Their bodies just follow what their hearts hear and see and this motivates them to action, performing, serving or giving back to others.

 Learning to love what you do so you can serve others

And this is another key to putting your heart into something you are doing or want to do: Learning to love what you do so that you can serve people or give back to others. Many people go through life half hearted, they hate their jobs, or if in school they hate school and studying. They complain about everything, only going through the motions without enthusiasm, or zeal. Some people go to some jobs just to get a paycheck, can’t wait for the weekend. Their hearts are not into it, there is no real interest in serving and the body can’t follow by expressing joy, enthusiasm, good energy, or a good attitude. Therefore a half hearted person becomes unhappy, and unhealthy.

Even a monotonous job can be enjoyable if your heart is into it. I see this all the time. Every week I go to this Fish Market in my neighborhood to buy fresh fish. They have 3 men standing behind the area where they clean the fish. One of them is always humming, whistling or singing while working cleaning fish. “Who can be happy working in a smelly place like this?” I wondered.  “And what is so interesting about cleaning fish?” I approached the counter one day and asked him: “You look like you really love your job, how long have you been doing this? “It is going to be 15 years this year, and I love it!”, he enthusiastically replied.

Love it? Now this man looks pretty young, maybe in his late thirties. Why couldn’t he have gone to school and studied for something else? And how much money can you make cleaning fish? I stood there wondering to myself as I waited.  He continued talking and said how enjoyable it was for him to meet and serve so many hundreds of people that come to the fish market every week. Just to be able to imagine all they can do in preparing their fish meals and know he had a small part in helping them by giving them cleaned fish to start with. Now that is a great attitude to have. His heart is really into what he does, and his body performs the same service for years from an enthusiastic heart because he loves serving people by cleaning fish, and this makes him happy.

 Not a very glamorous job, but when you think about it don’t we need all kinds of services? Somebody goes fishing and another person cleans the fish. We need them both, otherwise we wouldn’t have fish to eat, which is a contributor to our health. What about other professions whose jobs are much more sophisticated and valuable? A medical surgeon working in a hospital duties may be similar in some ways.  The only difference is that he is cutting people open, and getting paid more money. But still both of them can be equally happy if their hearts are into what they do and realize that they are both doing a job for the preservation of people’s lives, one providing food to eat while the other keeping people alive so they can eat.

It takes courage to put your heart into something inspite of difficulties

And it takes courage to persist in putting your heart into something. Courage means to persevere inspite of difficulties, to hold one’s own, or keep up one’s morale, to hold to a good spirit even when faced with failure. I am sure it must be tiring and difficult standing on your feet all day cleaning fish, or being a surgeon performing the same duties each day. And there is always the possibility of failure, not doing something right, making mistakes, but if the courageous heart is into what it does, it keeps the body performing at its best, never letting fear cause it to pull back.

And that is the main reason why some people never put their hearts into anything. Fear. Fear of failure, or being hurt, or of what other people might say or think. Being rejected or fear of so many imagined difficulties. Fear is one of the negative emotions that can cripple or paralyze the heart preventing the body from taking courageous action. Many people are afraid of starting a business for fear of failing, or from some sales jobs because it might involve public speaking. There are so many barriers that we sometimes put up from putting our hearts into what we really love or want to do, preventing our bodies from following.

Most of us have good health, all our senses, our full body, and circumstances, but still letting fear keep us from putting our best heart forward. I already gave some examples of people that were born blind or deaf and are courageously putting their hearts into what they do to serve people. In my next post I will give some more examples of others, some of them with severe disabilities but successful in doing what might seem impossible because they put their hearts into whatever they do.

Written by Glenda Brill (C)

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