On “Voices” by Antonio Porchia, Part 3

From Antonio:

“To wound the heart is to create it.”

We often only notice our own hearts when they hurt. When love passes on, stinging in its wake, we feel our hearts yearn. It is once damage is done, that we can find what has been wounded. We rarely think of the heart while it simply beats.

Does it take oneself suffering to realize that others also suffer? To realize other hearts? Must we be attacked, must we lose, must we fall in order to feel connected to other souls, other bodies, realizing they can hurt as ours do? Let us never lose sense of other hearts, of the fact that everyone has one.

To love at all is to allow oneself the possibility, and sometimes the certainty, of suffering. To love an animal is to purchase grief. And still we do. No heart can want to enjoy love without being ready to face rejection, refusal, and the shifting and swaying nature of other hearts.

What is the heart?

It is the place from which we hurt inside, and from which we restore ourselves. The place from which we feel grief, and the place where we begin to slowly feel it less. It is the location of our empathy. The source of our ability to forgive and to heal. Grieving is universal. So too can be the reconciliation of pain and love. It can link our experiences, it can be the bond between souls, it can gently remind us that this is what it means to feel human. Can make us strive toward the alleviation of suffering, toward the most help and the least harm for all, and drive our hand toward the very shining torch of justice.