Ah! My Heart!

‘My heart is a shadow, a light and a guide. Closed or open… I get to decide.’

The beautiful lyrical picture book ‘My Heart’, by Corinna Luyken (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbMadfnFeTA), just melted my heart.

My heart is a window,
My heart is a slide.
My heart can be closed
or opened up wide.

Some days it’s a puddle.
Some days it’s a stain.
Some days it is cloudy
and heavy with rain.

Some days it is tiny,
but tiny can grow…
and grow…
and grow.

There are days it’s a fence
between me and the world,
days it’s a whisper
that can barely be heard.

There are days it is broken,
but broken can mend,
and a heart that is closed
can still open again.

My heart is a shadow,
a light and a guide.
Closed or open…
I get to decide.

In its inimitable way, it tells young [and even older] readers about love and our unlimited capacity to love. Its tender illustrations in bleak grey and a blooming yellow of various sizes conveys so easily how natural it is to feel everything we do—joy, sorrow, melancholy, confusion, hope and even a sense of control over our emotions that we all can have. It is something we all feel, something which helps us live and grow.

It is heartwarming to see the whole range of emotions being described so gently, almost as if their simultaneous coexistence were not even a matter for thought, but simply a part of everyday existence. Especially, as we experience the whole gamut in varying degrees during the ongoing pandemic, when the heart is stretched to its limits with worry and fear as we struggle to hold ourselves together. The lonely heart misses loved ones, rejoicing momentarily in the well-being of its dear ones.

Fear and hope alternate as we wait for uncertainties to pass, hoping with each moment for this ordeal to end. Constant refrains of ‘stay safe’, stay positive’, ‘learn something new’, ‘think of good times’, ‘keep fit’, ‘meditate’, or ‘this too shall pass’, echo all around, but we know too well that these are not enough. Our fears are born of love, of a heart that loves too much. Yes, it is true—the heart is a puddle, it is often cloudy and heavy, tiny, yet hopeful. It wants to hide itself, lest it show its weakness. Yet it knows the worries will be naught as things will brighten.

It is up to us to take of the situation in any eventuality.

But is it all so simple?

Amid insurmountable physical distances, and unfathomable mental, emotional, and psychological chasms that deepen every moment we are forced to stay apart, our heart struggles, filled with longing, loss or grief. Despite everything, love remains the only primal emotion, abundant in its capacity to miss, yet short in supply through [human] touch.