A whole person’s life revolves around their heart.  In the essay Joyas Volardores by Brian Doyle he uses the word heart 26 times. In Doyle’s essay the word “heart” was repeated several times because every living thing has a heart and though we all have the same structures no two hearts are the same emotionally every animal is the same in the end because all we have is our hearts. In Doyle’s essay Joyas Volardores the word “heart” was repeated several times because every living thing has a heart and though all are hearts are different in size, heart beats, and the life span, every animal is the same in the end because all we have is our hearts.

 “A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second… A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser” (94) Doyle uses these facts to show us that a hummingbird beats really fast in comparison to its small size. He wants us to know that a hummingbird’s heart beats fast to compare it to humans and the way some humans never sit still and are always busy and always moving just like a humming bird. “They have more mitochondria in their heart muscles” (95) you may ask yourself why does such a small animal need all those mitochondria and then remember how fast that hummingbird’s heart beats. It honestly just needs more oxygen, more oxygen than us to stay alive, to keep going. Such a busy little bird you might think they need many breaks and rest but no, they “can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest” (95) and when they do pause to rest they “come close to death” (95) its not the flying five hundred miles that almost kills them it’s the resting that makes their heart so cold that they almost die. Just like human you may want to stop, but you can’t. When people lead a hectic life they hate slowing down. They feel like stopping would kill them of boredom. 

But not everyone lives the fast life. Doyle uses the blue whale, a slow and elusive animal to show us the other extreme of living. “The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue… It’s as big as a room” (95) to make us think of how some people live going with the flow and taking time in life like the big whale. Not all people like to live life in the spot light some people like living off the radar and off to the side just like the blue whale. When Doyle says “… then it essentially disappears from human ken, for next to nothing is known of the mating habits, travel patterns, diet, social life…” (95) he refers to the human and how we do just that. After high school how many people do you ever see or hear about until they’re dead, that’s kind of how a blue whale lives their life.

Everyone lives their life differently but in the end we are all the same with our heart. In the circle of life there’s so many patterns. The people that commit crimes, the people that invent new things, the people that make our dinner at a restaurant they all have hearts just like animals, some animals have four hearts like us, the whale, and the humming bird, and reptiles have three chambered hearts, and fishes have two chamber, then there’s worms with one chamber, and finally unicellular bacteria have anywhere from eleven to no chambers, but at least they have “fluid eternally in motion” (96) which connects us all together. “We all churn inside. So much held in a heart in a lifetime” (96) Doyle is saying here is that our whole life revolves around our hearts from the moment we are born the second we die. This is important because our lives and what gives it meaning and who we become comes from those moments in between the first and the last. Some people fill it like a humming bird and some fill it like a blue whale. 

In the essay he talks about different animals and their different hearts. He uses the characteristics of the heart like the heart beats, the size of hearts, and chambers of the heart to compare it to people and the way different people live. The heart in ourselves is the only true thing we have at the end of the day. “We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart” (96) he says this to show us that the connect with our heart is like no other. The connections we make with people in life may be important, but it’s the connection with our hearts is what makes us unique. The unique connection we have as humans is the same for all animals. 