Of all the organs in the bodies of any life form, the heart is placed in the highest regard alongside the brain. This is because the heart can be considered the source of life for the rest of the organs, as the heart pumps the oxygen and nutrients necessary for functioning to every other part of the body. It also represents the emotions and love of the individual. As such, society tends to put high regard in the metaphorical size and shape of one’s heart. Bryan Doyle, however, claims that one should abandon such conceptions. In his paper Joyas Voladores, he tells us several tips about life by using the hearts of various animals as reference: that we should spend the time in our lives carefully, that everyone has problems no matter how different they are, and that we should open our hearts to others.

Doyle’s paper is named after hummingbirds, which are known as “flying jewels”. These animals are the core of his first message, which is to not burn ourselves out. He noted that hummingbirds live very short lives due to them pumping their hearts too fast, thus resulting in heart attacks, ruptures, and aneurisms. Meanwhile, tortoises, which are also animals with relatively small hearts, tend to live for hundreds of years. He describes this phenomenon as being due to heartbeats being a limited resource, with each living being having two billion to use up throughout their lifetime. This is a call for us in the audience to make wiser decisions, as we could shorten our lifespan by choosing to rush everything, or allocate the resource that is our heartbeats wisely and live a long life. At first glance this may seem as though the author wants us to live like the tortoise. However, it is in reality an order given by him to make a balance between the two. This can be seen by how the author describes how beautiful and wonderful the hummingbird is, yet says nothing about the turtle. The turtle has nothing going for it except for the fact that it lives long. Meanwhile, the hummingbird lives a short life, but one as a revered jewel. They live an exciting and joyful life filled with productivity. He says “Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old”. (Doyle 2). However, he also makes sure to note that all the hummingbird species were absolutely “the most amazing thing you have ever seen, each thunderous wild heart the size of an infant’s fingernail… a brilliant music” (Doyle 2). As such, the author tells us to make a proper balance, one in which we can build our lives to be enjoyable, but manage to live long enough to enjoy that life to its fullest.

The size of one’s heart is a metaphorical statement attesting to how kind and loving they are. However, the size does not matter when calculating the amount of pain that one feels, as described by Doyle. He shows us the examples of the blue whale that has a heart big enough for children to walk around in, yet we know naught of except for the fact that it travels in pairs and that their cries can be heard from a massive distance away. Then he notes the different kinds of animals with different numbers of chambers in their hearts, such as how mammals have four while worms have eleven single-chambered hearts. In all the hearts, however, liquid churns, like a terrible storm. These two statements are describing how every living being goes through pain and suffering, no matter how they may seem. Size, shape, species, race, none of that affects the fact that we all suffer. The amount of our suffering may be different or the same, and no physical evidence may show that. In fact, just as how a hummingbird’s small heart churns its blood at a much faster rate than a large heart of a whale, someone who may seem as though they have a small heart, seeming mean and rude, may in fact be suffering far more than the happy others. The opposite could also be true. This is something that we can neither confirm nor deny in any individual, and thus we should make an attempt not to judge another by how they look or how they act, without thinking that they do not feel pain as we do. As written in the book, “No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside” (Doyle 3).

The final message left by the author was that we should not try to solidify our hearts. We all feel pain, but trying to avoid that is an impossible effort that is in the end, all for naught. No matter how hard we attempt to steel ourselves and prevent anything painful from making their way into our hearts, the attempt will be pointless because our defenses on our hearts will always be torn down by something that warms our hearts, be it something cute, sad, or nostalgic. Many examples were given, including “…a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you …” (Doyle 3). So many things can shatter any walls we can possibly form to guard our hearts. Furthermore, the act of attempting to harden our hearts also ends up keeping others out of it, which will cause us the pain of loneliness. As such, we should not waste the effort in trying to put any sort of defense on our hearts.

Don’t waste your time and effort, don’t judge others thinking that they don’t feel pain as we do, and don’t pointlessly make the attempt to wall off the pain that we feel. Those are the three orders given by Doyle in his paper, and they are all connected in some way. We often judge others in an attempt to keep them away from our hearts, but by doing so we end up causing pain to them and ourselves as well. Attempting to keep them away from our hearts wastes time and energy, going against the first demand. All this seems simple to heed, yet the advice is given because the majority of humanity attempts to refuse to accept it. Every day, thousands upon millions of people do exactly what the advice tells them not to, and it does not help a single person by doing so. Instead, it only causes suffering for all. By heeding the chain of tips given in the paper, we can live a happier, longer life not just for ourselves, but we can help others end up the same way as well.
