By: Aliaa Fathy
Somewhere in the center of the chest lies this small organ that pumps blood and pulsates with life. It’s the heart.
Here, we constantly hear thousands of beats, a continuous echo that tells countless stories in simple rhythms.
I wonder, if the heart could speak our language, would it reveal anything of what it holds within?
Would it tell us the stories hidden behind walls of silence?
Or will he tell us stories he lived and endured alone?
Or will he cry out with a groan trapped deep within?
Or will he smile like the one who carries him between his ribs and continues on his path with unwavering resolve?
Here, every heartbeat holds a story. Every feeling has an echo. Every silence holds within it a hidden volcano of emotions.
Here, we experience both feeling and its opposite.
Here, we experience both feelings and their opposites: security and its absence, trust and betrayal, departure and return, existence and loss, passion, and extinguishing. Here, all opposing forces converge upon us.
From here, our fear often springs. We listen to its persistent calls, bewildered, and sometimes wish to silence it. Despite knowing its intuition is sometimes true, we still fear it, dreading that it will betray us as it often does, weakening against our will.
And often we find him to be right with all the messages he carries for us and the signals he sends us to guide us to the right path, for the eyes of the heart never err.
Here the heart whispers in a living, honest language, perhaps unknown to many, with joy that pulsates with life, with sadness that makes our features wither and extinguish the candles of our dreams, with hope that illuminates the darkness of the path, with despair that we resist and overcome, with enthusiasm that we rush towards with vitality and energy, with defeat that we quickly overcome and rise up, and with love and giving that overflows to everyone that revives life within us and adorns it with all that is beautiful.
What wondrous power this organ possesses!
Despite its small size, it holds all the meaning of life, if it is not life itself.
It also has an extraordinary ability to speak to the conscience, guiding the mind and bringing it together at a common point, leading us to safety and protecting us from internal conflicts.
Through the eyes of the heart and insight, we see horizons that expand to illuminate paths of truth.
O God, protect our hearts and preserve them with all that they hold, and grant us the insight that will always illuminate our paths.
