Best known for his work in editing the Portland Magazine and for his numerous awards in Literature, author Brian Doyle puts together an amazing prose poem titled “Joyas Volardores”. Doyle was born in 1956 and has an immense writing portfolio beginning in the early 2000’s. In this specific writing, Doyle’s thoughts revolved around different creature’s hearts, their heart structure, and the impact others had emotionally on one’s heart. Openly expressing that his two biggest accomplishments in life were getting his wife to marry him and the birth of his three sons, it is fair to say that Doyle was a family man (Doyle 94). This story, which revolved around the heart, rooted from a personal experience, as his son had a heart condition where he was born with only three valves in his heart. The typical human heart is meant to have four valves (The Fine Delight 1). This condition impacted him personally, which led to the writing of this story, which is arguably his most famous work. The most prominent motif throughout the story is the significance of the heart and the choice one makes everyday to shape the life it provided.

Two billion heartbeats is the average amount that a creature gets to spend. Doyle begins with one of the most noteworthy quotes in this story, which shaped the reoccurring motif that each person had a decision on how they would spend their time given. An important thought is surfaced in his writing, “Every creature 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” (95). The fast paced hummingbird just goes through the motions of life without taking a moment to slow down and see the time passing. Its heartbeats were used quickly in its never pausing life, and they burned out (95). The tortoise on the other hand, made every minute feel ten times slower, absorbing its surroundings and slowing down the motions in the day-to-day life it was given. Doyle implied an important question: how are we going to spend those two billion heartbeats that we have been handed? On average, a human lives between the length of the hummingbird and the tortoise. One can find the balance between super speed and the lethargic lifestyle. The heart is our center, and drives our existence. Its importance is unquestionable.  But it is easy to fall into the path of using it to just simply exist, spending our time to find food, water, shelter, and working our whole lives. Is this really living? This is where the choice falls; instead one could use it to live. 

The title of the story, Joyas Volardores means, “flying jewels”, hummingbirds used to be referred to as this because they were first found when the pilgrims came to colonize America. They were a new species that the immigrants had never seen before. They were exotic creatures to the newcomers, flying and buzzing around collecting nectar at a rapid pace (94). Their movements and way of life was fascinating to those of past centuries, for which they received their name. Their movements and their excited movement fascinated Doyle as well, their speed of life was unmatched and unlike anything they had every seen before. The story follows the day-to-day life of the hummingbird and goes into detail of many other creatures’ hearts and the lives they live. Hummingbirds are able to move at sixty miles an hour for over five hundred miles at a time with out simply moment to pause. (95). When they go to pause, it is a near death experience; their bodies are inept and unacquainted to this moment of relaxation. This never ending motion comes with a price, “The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature. It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine” (95). The heart is a working machine that pumps and fuels our bodies, but every machine has a limit. Any animal or creature has the ability to burn out and their hearts can be easily overwhelmed. Humans are not built to be living in this hummingbird practice, but it is all too easy to fall into this lifestyle. Doyle stresses this importance because of the limited time his son has received due to the deformity in his heart.  His son has been given less time to live then others, so he truly knows that one should slow down and appreciate the time that they have been given, and live their life with meaning. 

Doyle ends his story by stepping away from the mechanics of the heart and focusing on the emotional side, how others can affect one and their life. One’s heart is not just simply their lifeline, but it is through the heart that others can enter our lives and change it. Doyle writes, “You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant” (96). In a human’s life, a time comes along where our entire heart opens up, whether it is because of a woman, a child, or a moment of fear (96). And these are the memorable moments that make the heart so vital; it is the connections that one forms in their life that can truly determine the value of one’s life. One can spend their life fast paced like a hummingbird and completely miss out on these moments that life provides for us.

 The significance of the heart and the life that we have been handed is the importance to slow down and experience the gifts that it supplies for us. One can spend their heartbeats running through life fast-paced, slowly moving, focused on only life’s necessities, closed off out of fear, opened to love, or any other way they may chose; but it is truly their own decision on how they will spend those two billion heartbeats that they have been handed.