As humans, we have developed the impressive skill of being able to turn almost everything into a symbol. Through literature, music, art, etc, we have developed the habit of taking run of the mill, ordinary, and mundane objects, and turning them into something that can make you truly, and honestly feel something. The heart is probably one of the most over romanticized objects in history. When we were young, and before we knew anything about human anatomy, or anything at all for that matter, we would picture the heart as two simple lines drawn in red crayon on the masterpiece you drew in school on the picture of you and your family to hang on the refrigerator. As we grow older we would learn that this just isn’t true, and the heart is much more bloody and intricate and functionally purposeful then our miss-led adolescent minds had us believing for so long. In Joyas Volardores by Brian Doyle, the heart itself, both physical and figurative abilities are discussed, explored, and marveled at. No matter size or build, the heart is capable of two of the most essential parts of existence, sustaining life, and holding what makes that life worth living.

Hummingbirds are one of those few animals left in the world that seem almost mythological. They differ from every bird that we know about, and are by far one of the most interesting. One of the most interesting things about them is their hearts. “To drive those metabolisms they have race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate. Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taunt. They have more mitochondria in their heart muscles—anything to gulp more oxygen. Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight.” (Doyle, 95)  Just like them, their hearts are unlike any other species in the world. They are incredibly engineered and designed specifically for and around the bird’s rigorous needs. But even these tried and true blood pumping machines, sometimes breakdown, and fail to function, leaving the once full of life, beautiful and agile creature, as simply organs entrapped by a thing layering of skin and colorful feathers. In less then a second, the heart that sustained a living breathing animal for so long simply will just cease to be. The irreversibility of it all is frightening. To put it simply, life depends on the heart. Yes, there are other organs that one could argue are equally important, but the heart holds the essence of our being. Ever since we opened our eyes, everything we have seen or done, everywhere we have gone, and everyone we have met is kept in our hearts. Even the smallest of animals have life teeming in their hearts.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the blue whale, which is the largest mammal in the world, which naturally means it has the largest heart in the world. The monstrosity of it is almost incomprehensible. “A child could walk around it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. The valves are as big as the swinging doors in a saloon. This house of a heart drives a creature a hundred feet long.”(Doyle, 95) Despite the fact that the hummingbird’s heart is almost non-existent next to the whales, they preform the same function. Every single living being, despite how small, possess hearts that are capable of the same basic functions. They are capable of keeping a living breathing animal alive, which is probably one of the most amazing feats that all of us take for granted. Without the heart we would not be, nothing would be in fact. Without the small murmur of the beating heart of an ant, or a bumblebee, or a butterfly, there would be no life. Everything is connected in our world, and believe it or not, all of us depend on the soft, yet somehow louder than life heartbeat of a hummingbird to the blue whale. 

Life is not the only thing the heart gives. The heart also controls how we live. We put up walls to protect our hearts, because we know how incredibly delicate they are. They are not so delicate in the way that hummingbird’s hearts are, but in the way that they can be broken and damaged by something so seemingly harmless as “a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.”(Doyle, 96) These are the things that can sometimes be more detrimental than any physical ailment of the heart. They make the actual fact of living so much more difficult. We have so many things that as children, we expect to eventually happen to us. We think that we will grow up, fall in love with the perfect person and live happily ever after. We want to grow up as fast as we can, eager to do all the things that grown ups get to do like stay up late and eat candy whenever they want. But as we get older, the reality of our misguided notions damage us. We realize that not a single person in this world is perfect, and staying up late is not worth the consequences the next day, and eating chocolate will make you gain unwanted weight. Everyone of us is guilty of putting walls up around our hearts, because we learned from such a young age how easy it is for our hearts to break, in more ways then one.

So much depends on the pitter patter of the heart. A small pump of the heart can mean the difference between life and death, and a few words can tear us down. The heart is so much more than an organ that pumps blood throughout our body, at risk of sounding cliché, the heart holds everything that makes us who we are. No matter the specific size, capacity or makeup, every heart functions the same. They all give life and symbolize something much more, and maybe our idea of what the heart was when we were too young to know better, is not that far off after all.

 