Our World: BROKEN HEART

Cherish the child, man and woman in you to love, appreciate and empathise with every being around you.

I remember reading this message on the packet of QuickFix glue tube “Joins Everything Except Broken Hearts.” Now, when I recall the message, it fills me with many questions. What can cause my heart to break? What will happen if it breaks? How will I mend it? True, these questions are direct from my mind; if my brain is dead then I am merely declared ‘brain dead’, but if my heart stops beating, then I am clinically pronounced dead. Yes, this is again from my mind, which is trying to reason out why, what, when and how my heart can metaphorically and clinically break down. My mind is my rationality with respect to the conscious and subconscious state of my mind. My heart denotes my emotions and feelings. My wisdom is to maintain a harmonious balance between the two.

When I try to answer the questions, I realise that both biological and emotional factors together affect the heart. When I am overpowered by negative emotions such as sorrow, stress, anxiety, depression, anger and resentment due to various reasons, it affects the clinical health of my heart. This, to certain extent, answers my questions of when and why heart breaks.

My mind does not stop here; it wants me to find out how can I know my heart is broken? This again makes me ask myself what are the causes of negative emotions that affect me mentally and my heart’s health too? The most popular reasons I am aware of are: losing a loved one, marriage or a loving relationship that does not work out; setback in professional and personal life; when someone betrays me or breaks my trust; when I don’t achieve what I am aspiring for; when I am unable to fulfill the expectations of not only myself but also of my family, friends, colleagues, organisation or community; when my self-worth (dignity) is hurt. When I narrate the causes to my mind then it makes me think of the biological symptoms like respiratory and gastric problem, heartburn, hypertension, high blood pressure, various heart ailments that indicate heart break and can be fatal enough to be a clinical ‘heart break’. Needless to say, strong negative emotions apart from snapping the heart strings (tendons) can also cause severe mental depression results in addiction or suicide: a heart break of its kind.

Now, my mind asks me what I should do when I suffer from an emotional heart break that can affect my health and happiness. If possible, can I avoid such heart break? This question makes me delve deep into my heart and mind and find this: I have to be true (honest) to myself, have faith in myself, believe in myself that is my true strength. This will help me see through lies, deceit, manipulation, discrimination, exploitation and aggression resulting in jealousy, resentment, sorrow, anxiety, helplessness, depression, anger and vengeance. How can I avoid negative emotions by being true to myself; in fact, what does being true to me really mean?

Being true to self is to be aware of my strengths in the form of my potential and capabilities; my fear and apprehension in the form of my weakness and dislikes (the mental blocks) that can make me biased or prejudiced that invariably affect my thoughts and decisions. To love myself means to accept my weakness and not be ashamed of it; if I don't, then I will try to hide it giving in to negative emotions, thoughts and actions. When I am aware of my strength and weakness, then I can constantly make every effort to improve on them to meet the challenges that come my way to achieve my objectives or goals, such as to harmonise with the environment - the surroundings.

Believing in self (being true to self) means being aware of my potential, and accordingly should reason and develop the strategy to achieve my objective. For instance, my objective is to be happy. Then I will reason out the cause of my sorrow and use my potential to deter the cause of unhappiness. This I can achieve only when I believe in myself. If I don’t believe in myself then I deceive myself and succumb to failure.

Let me take the example of being happy. At the moment I am tired and I ask myself how can I be happy? My heart replies that a refreshing cup of tea or coffee would do. I do not heed to the answer and fix myself a cuppa. Instead, I lie down and let negative thoughts crowd my mind only to take me farther away from being happy.

Another example is: my heart urges me for an alcoholic drink to feel happy. I give in to its wish and continued heeding to it for more drink and drink until it affects my mind and body to the extent that I fall into an intoxicated stupor. Why did this happen, when I was merely heeding to my heart’s demand?

The answer is simple I did not listen to my mind too that was trying to reason with me to the beneficial limit of the alcoholic drink. To believe in myself I have to constantly strike a balance between my mind and heart. This will prevent me from harming myself, or from getting overpowered by negativity.

Why should I believe in myself? Having faith in or believing in self is the hope that keeps me moving on to achieve my day to day objectives and even bigger objectives of life. It is hope that keeps me alive.

Let’s try to understand it through an example. I want to become an artist so that I can paint and sketch beautiful pictures and even take beautiful photographs of natural surroundings, animals, birds and people around me. I need to believe in myself so that I can fulfill my dream: My mind confers with my heart about my interest with respect to my strength and weakness (my true potential) to realise my dream of becoming an artist. When I listen to my heart and mind together, then I can devise a realistic plan and take necessary steps to develop my talent and fulfill my objective: paint and sketch beautiful pictures.

While trying to develop my talent I may take a famous artist as my role model and his works as the standard I aspire to achieve to become an artist. This is where I again make the mistake of listening to my heart more than I do to my mind:

A role model is a person I intend to emulate and not imitate. To emulate means to imbibe his principles, his good habits and his way of developing himself and the way he addresses the challenges he faces in his life. I do not blindly copy his favourite colour, clothes, food, his handwriting, his hairstyle. Such a fallacious imitation will evidently frustrate me as I will invariably experience an identity crisis because I ignored my true self and blindly copied someone I consider to be my role model. This also means, I should not constantly compare my work of art to that of my role model, then that will make me doubt my ability to achieve my objective. Again, if I enroll into a course with this objective in mind: to become a painter as good as my role model and paint exactly like him, then the I am confirming my failure to achieve my objective through formal training too, as I have already explained it: I will constantly compare my ability with that of the famous painter: my role model. I begin to ignore my true potential, work on them to develop my talent. This results in frustration and self doubt. I become sensitive to explicit and implicit remarks and comments of my friends, family and the community and that reinforces self doubt and slackens my effort in achieving my aspiration. Therefore, I should emulate the qualities of the people I admire, I should not imitate them. I again miss out on striking a balance between my heart and mind. Unfortunately, self doubt evokes negative emotions of frustration and I miss out on rationally striking a balance between my heart and mind and develop my unique potential with or without professional help. I miss out in believing in myself.

Then the need of the hour is to strike the balance through proper introspection or reflection that I can achieve through mindful meditation to effectively strike a balance between my heart and mind. The objective of mindful meditation and introspection is to regain dignity-self worth (self confidence), while valuing and respecting all that is around me.

Let’s try to understand it with the help of an example: My parents want me to become a doctor, they constantly remind me of the tacit commitment I have made to them to become a doctor. I give in to their wish; or I want to become a chartered accountant because it is a lucrative profession, I ignore the fact, I may not have the aptitude to be a chartered accountant and I may not be interested in becoming a doctor as my parents desire me to. My heart tells me that I have the potential to become a Teacher Learner, but I ignore it. I reason out ways and means, both fair and unfair, such as bribing or intimidating the authorities to get necessary academic scores or marks to become a doctor, if I have acceded to my parents wish or to become a chartered accountant that my heart desires and ignore my mind’s reminder of my true potential. Have I really achieved the objective? Have I been true to myself? Have I really believed in myself to realise my parents’ or my dreams? What will happen then?

In fact, I have succumbed to negativity at the very instance of trying to ignore and falsify my potential. I will give in to negative attitude. I will become arrogant to defy the truth. I will try to avoid any introspection to address the cause of my sorrow and frustration. I will get into a vicious circle of being attentive to the failures and misgivings of other people in order to ignore and cover up my own weakness. I will indulge in gossip, libel, discrimination and even give in to aggression and vengeance to hide from my own truth. Intense negativity will take its toll on my health and above all, on my heart and mind. The cause of all this is anyone’s guess, I refused to trust myself, love myself, believe in myself and have faith in myself. The resultant negativity can also make me a timid and submissive person without a mind of my own, when I constantly give in to undue expectations my parents, well wishers and invariably I will set skewed expectation from myself. I fail to be assertive enough to reason with self and my well wishers. I avoid being a skeptic rationalist and helplessly give in to blind faith: I give in to the "herd instinct".

I cannot ignore the fact: “hurt people, hurt people”. When there is negative emotion in me, I will share negative thoughts and emotions with those around me. I become a victim of my own negative emotions and I display it through my negative thoughts and actions.

Let’s take a simple and mundane example: I go to a public place where I have to remove my hat before entering the premises. When I return to the place I had kept my hat, I find someone has stolen it. Instead of informing the administration of my loss, I wear someone else’s hat on my way out. When I discuss this with my family and friends, I do it with an implicit expectation that they will endorse my action, which people often do by sharing their similar experience and unknowingly transforming such act into an unwarranted norm.

In the future, if I revisit the place and remove my hat only to find it has been nipped yet again, and I this time I report the incidence to the administration. They may assure me of corrective action. When I share the experience yet again with my peer group and friends, the same people who had validated my action of taking someone else’s hat and not reporting the incidence to the authority will ask me, why I did not use my ‘common sense’ and wear someone else hat. This will make me question my belief (in my integrity) and invariably shake up my self confidence.

My mind says, survival is more important than integrity. My heart responds integrity(humanity) is the very basis of my survival. Constant subtle and severe backlashes of this kind will affect the balance of my heart and mind resulting in negative impact on my emotional and clinical health...

Now, my heart and mind together ask me, it is easy to deceive self than to be true to self. Why is it so?

They want me to explain it:

When I am exposed to gossip, slander, aggression, vengeance, discrimination, rejection, animosity, deception, connivance, derogatory practical jokes, black humour, negative competition, when social validation is more important than to be true to self (Believe in self).

I reiterate, ‘hurt people hurt people’. To be true to self, love self, and believe in self and have faith in self culminates into my dignity in the form of deep sense of self respect, self worth, and this result in the courage to be compassionate. To be able to understand the person’s hurt that has caused him/her to hurt me and respond to him/her accordingly instead of reacting negatively to their negative action. Such response is a sign of wise use of mind and heart. It’s easy to become vengeful and retaliate when hurt, but it takes real courage to comprehend the hurt caused by a hurt person. The ability to be compassionate is a mark of true faith in self.

Negative intentions in the form of thoughts transform into action can be negative and I am responsible for them. My ability to take responsibility of my thoughts and actions is the basis of my integrity and self respect.

My heart and mind are not satisfied with my response, they want me to explain how I can overcome the continuous onslaught of negative emotions that may distort my perception affecting my dignity and self confidence, causing stress and anxiety the precursor of both emotional and clinical heart break?

My instinctive response to the question is, if I am true to myself, then I will respect my personal space and also that of those I interact with. I will give time to myself to relax both physically and mentally through reflection in the form of prayer, meditation, yoga, physical exercise, creative pursuits: pursuing in leisure my hobbies using my creative abilities to transform my negative emotions like sorrow, anger, resentment in creating a aesthetically beautiful art, craft or a delicious dish. I may tend to the plants in the garden; spend time with children, elderly and animals. In this way, I am able to take care of my emotional and physical well being. I pursue only the creative activities I like and not indulge in activities with the intention of gaining social recognition or social validation. Often people decide to go to the gym to gain community/social recognition or social validation.

There are people who vacation in specific tourist places that have been endorsed or recommended by their friends or by the professional circle or social community they are striving to establish themselves in. Such actions only prevent them from being true to themselves and genuinely enjoy and are truly happy and relaxed during the vacation without being self conscious. When I am true to myself, I value my individuality and that does not make feel lonely, value myself enough to value my surroundings and the environment within and without.

I reiterate, the need for self development is not to feel emotionally weak- to need someone's shoulder to lean on. Self development is to improve my emotional intelligence and my ability to emapthise.

My mind laughs at my heart and says, ‘without me, you cannot identify sorrow and anger, you cannot control your anger from becoming self and object destructive. Are you aware of it? I scratch my head as I really wonder what will be heart's reply.

It gently put a smile on my lips and I hear it reply, “the sorrow melts into tears and wells out of the eyes. It is always better to cry and lighten the weight of fear, sorrow and resentment to weigh down the heart and transform into destructive anger. True, I do feel much better when I cry away my sorrow. My mind echoes the smile and says, “I cherish the positive sense of humour that does not belittle or hurt anyone's heart. It is a universal truth, if I hurt anyone, I hurt myself. Therefore, I am true to myself, love myself, believe in myself and have faith in myself, and all this I am able to do with you, heart. You help me to avoid emotional or clinical heart break.”