The Matter of the Heart

After talking to a friend of mine who is confused about their job and relationship, I started thinking about life, about how none of us really knows what we’re doing. We’re in jobs that work us too hard, in cities without our real friends, in shoes we’ve walked too far in, in relationships we don’t care enough about. So we’re all waiting for something -
an answer
a clue
an idea as to:

why we spent four years in college
why we’ll be paying for it until 2015
why things are never the way we think they’re going to be
why we care
why we’re never satisfied
why some things never change
why are we (and how did we get) here
why the handyman never showed up to cover that empty hole love has left behind.

I felt it this weekend, it crept up quick and unsuspecting, like a ghost or a rainstorm or a deadline, gripping my chest making my heart beating at a rapid fire rate. And after I asked myself the impossible question: am I having a heart attack? I realized that my heart was being attacked by panic.

Life and its unanswered questions pile on so quickly we don’t even realize it, and suddenly there you are, feeling the anxiety of all that is your life pumping through your chest faster than you can count it (my heart!), making it difficult for you to breathe, forcing you to realize that you’re alone, and that there are no answers, and that if something really horrible happened right now no one would be there to help you.

And your heart picks up speed the more your brain thinks about it. You count the beats, over a hundred per minute, you lose count, your eyes on the clock, trying to breathe deep, thinking you should have spent more time taking care of your own heart.

And I thought between passing seconds (one Mississippi, two Mississippi…): are our hearts more delicate than we let ourselves believe? Is one really the loneliest number (Three Dog Night, 1969)? Can we internalize too much, keep life away for so long that after a while there is only so much it can take before it gives up keeping a steady beat, falsely reminding you that everything is fine, and picking up pace and pounding so hard that you have no choice but to feel it?

Because when faced with no choice but to feel (your heart is not a democracy), that’s exactly what you end up doing - and simply wait for the pain to subside.