Life should be lived to its fullest potential.  There are so many joyful experiences in life as well as many sad ones. In Brian Doyle’s Joyas Volardores, Doyle explains that humans instinctively attempt to block themselves from pain.  But, he says that this is not how we should live.  Instead, Doyle suggests that humans need to open their heart and experience the pain and sorrow, in order to fully experience all the love and joy that life has to offer.

Doyle uses the hummingbird as an example in showing that love correlates with pain.  The hummingbird dies a painful, early death due to living such a fast-paced, fulfilling life.  Doyle explains the hummingbird’s life as a metaphor for the more love you receive, the more pain you will receive in result. Doyle shows his amazement with the species by stating facts one after another, “Each one visits a thousand flowers a day.  They dive at sixty miles an hour.  They can fly backwards.  They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest”(Doyle, 95).  The use of these staggering numbers in the facts emphasizes how exceptional the hummingbird’s lives are.  But living such a life has its consequences. Doyle explains the hummingbirds consequences in the third paragraph while relating it back to the reader, “It’s expensive to fly.  You burn out.  You fry the machine.  You melt the engine”(Doyle, 95).  Flying, or experiencing life in the fullest, comes at an expense.  Here, Doyle uses the word “you”, to speak directly to the reader.  He is not only talking about the hummingbirds, but now we know that he wants us to relate this back to ourselves.  The expense Doyle mentions, is feeling pain and sorrow in the human life.  The words “machine” and “engine” are metaphors for the heart.  They are objects that sustain life, and when overworked, like in the hummingbird’s case, they “fry” or “burn out”.  The point Doyle is trying to make here is that those who live life to the fullest and experience the most love and happiness, also experience the most pain and sadness.  By repeating the word “you” multiple times, he emphasizes that we have a choice to if we let our hearts feel this pain.  Doyle seems to believe that the pain and sorrow is worth suffering through because the happiness and joy you receive is so much greater.  He spends more than two paragraphs stating remarkable facts about the hummingbird, and not much more than a few sentences of their death.  The amazing things the hummingbird does in its life outweigh their painful death.  Just as opening your heart to experience the pain in life, will be outweighed by the love you experience along with it.

The animal with the largest heart, the whale, is another example that Doyle used to show that with great happiness comes great sorrow.  He informs us that, “the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles”(96).  By including the fact that whales have the “largest hearts in the world”, Doyle is correlating the capacity to feel love with the size of the heart.  This could imply that whales live with an open heart, because the bigger something is, the harder it is to protect it.   Whales travel in pairs, which suggests that love is an essential part of their lives.  But like Doyle showed earlier, opening your heart to love, brings great pain.  The whales “penetrating moans” and “piercing cries” show that they feel a lot of pain.  The words “penetrating” and “piercing” are used to make the reader comprehend how deep their pain is.   The cries of pain are so enormous that they can be heard for “miles and miles”.   While the whale’s large heart allows it to feel love, it also causes the whale to live in perpetual misery. 

In the last paragraph, Doyle explicitly relates his main idea to humans.  He explains how it is human nature to close off our hearts to others, but we might as well open up our hearts because they will all be broken eventually.  He talks about this human instinct when he says, “We are utterly open with no one in the end- not mother or father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend.  We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart”(Doyle, 96).  All of these people listed are those we are thought to be closest and most open to.  By listing these people, Doyle is showing that humans are never truly open with anyone.  The heart is compared to a house, that has windows and is solely occupied by only your self.  The “windows” are the small parts of your true feelings that you let other people see.  The only person that can see the entire house of your heart, is you. But Doyle suggests, “Perhaps we must.  Perhaps we could not bear to be so utterly naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart”(Doyle, 96).  By using the word “must”, he implies that closing off our hearts is human instinct.  “Naked” has a negative connotation here that helps the reader understand how hard it can be to open up.  A naked human body is exposed, vulnerable, and embarrassing.  A naked heart, is being open with all of your feelings, which can make someone feel vulnerable and embarrassed.  “Harrowed” also has a connotation of being a more permanent distress.  This helps imply that being open to everything in life, can bring constant distress to your heart. Though Doyle suggests that it is almost pointless to close off your heart though because “all hearts finally are bruised and scarred… no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall”(Doyle, 96).  “All” hearts are eventually hurt, meaning that the pain and sorrow in life are inevitable.   It does not matter if your defense is “ferocious”, which has a connotation of describing things that are very fierce and unable to be defeated.  By using the word “ferocious”, Doyle is implying that no one can protect their heart from being broken, no matter how hard you try.  He continues on with the house metaphor, when he brings in the “bricks”.  He uses the word “bricks” to emphasize how nothing can fully protect your heart. Bricks are the sturdiest thing you can build a house with; they are thought to be unbreakable.  A brick wall is the one of the hardest walls to break down.  It also takes a long time to build.  So if you take a lot of your time to build something up, only for it to be torn down, it is not worth building in the first place.  That is the point Doyle is making with this; why spend time “building” a wall around your heart, if it’s just going to be broken down?  There is no reason to try and protect your heart from pain; the pain in life is inevitable.  We all may as well leave our hearts open so we can experience the love life has to offer as well.

Like the whale and the hummingbird, we should leave our hearts open, so we can experience as much love and happiness in life as they do.  Although having an open heart may lead to more pain, some pain is inevitable.  There is no point in sheltering your heart from suffering, if your wall can easily be broken down.  In the end blocking yourself from pain will only be blocking yourself from your happiness.
