Heart Openers

There is noth­ing cuter than _____. You fill in the blank. It is what­ever opens your heart. For me it is see­ing a small child with a puppy. The same can hap­pen when I see chil­dren hold­ing hands — or an old cou­ple walk­ing in a park. Some­thing plucks your heart strings when inno­cence appears in the form of new life or lim­ited life (like men­tally chal­lenged indi­vid­u­als that are chil­dren for life). Most of us are moved by the suf­fer­ing of the inno­cent. A stroll through a children’s wing of a hos­pi­tal will put a lump in your throat.
Our hearts are always on the hunt for that strik­ing moment — that glimpse of life in its most vul­ner­a­ble forms. For what­ever rea­son, there are plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties on this planet for such occa­sions. Nature is filled with them. A young bird makes its first awk­ward flut­ter into being air­borne. A child takes his or her first step. Bear cubs are seen play­ing on a grassy moun­tain­side. Glimpses of life as play. The happy sounds of peo­ple on a roller­coaster.
The heart has its own lan­guage and its own quest for the art forms upon which it feeds. Music stirs the heart. With or with­out words, the notes res­onate in the great halls of the soul. Spring winds, Winter’s cold, the rustling of Fall leaves — and moods begin to shift. Even the melan­choly trig­gered by the sight or smells of old decay­ing tree trunks is worth the moment’s pass­ing pon­der.
The flow of emo­tions never really stops. They are often the most pure and intense in our dreams. From the first few liv­ing cells to the last few still hold­ing on, emo­tions are there. They con­nect or repel. They endear or dis­dain. What­ever they do at any given moment, they do to bal­ance some occa­sion of life. Despite the has­sles of con­tem­po­rary air travel, there is noth­ing like board­ing a plane or the angelic sense of flight when the wheels lift from the run­way.
What­ever the prize or the lim­i­ta­tion, the heart is right there to inter­pret the event. It can give some of the most mun­dane activ­i­ties a spin of nos­tal­gia or won­der. The heart does not like to be hur­ried. Take your time. As the line from the Titanic movie theme song says, “the heart will go on…and on.”
Go with it!