Hearts and minds

Never let your heart grow hard. Though a big heart brings pain, the alternative, the life of the hardened heart, is a scary thing. I sometimes see people whose hearts have grown hard, and their lives are boundaried by hate and anger, and fear, too, and I think that this is another kind of death-in-life, a living death where people go about the business of living without being alive inside.

So, for those of you who suffer and feel empathy and sympathy, don't ever close down that, even though it causes you pain. A big heart is necessary for a loving life, and for loving life, itself. If more people had big hearts, we'd have fewer wars and a more hopeful and happy world.

There are ideologies that have arisen around hearts of stone -- and not just on the Right, either, which prides itself on its hard-nosed (and hard-headed and hard-hearted) thinking; there are those on the Left who are that way, too.

The legacy of the hardened heart is that it blinkers your vision, keeps you from seeing what needs to be seen and, more importantly, felt.

Our world seems increasingly driven by hard-hearted people. Maybe it's always been that way, but perhaps it doesn't need to be that way. I know it's challenging because gentle, decent, imaginative, loving, empathic people are less likely to bring about social change than violent, ruthless, thoughtless, hateful, cruel people.

But by holding onto our hearts, we can bear witness to what we know is wrong, and not pretend it's not there in front of us. The hard-hearted want to bludgeon everyone into silence, to shut down decency and compassion as somehow immoral and uneconomical. Don't let them. Let your sensitivity and empathy pour into your day-to-day living, into your art, your everything.

Life's too joyful a thing to waste with a hateful heart.