Why The Heart Isn’t A Machine,
I) The heart is part of the autonomic nervous system, we don’t think to make it work, it just does. We don’t consciously think to fall in love, but we can usually pinpoint it to a specific moment. It just happens, like a heartbeat, in a heartbeat. Perhaps that’s why when our heart does break, we don’t ask for it, don’t know about it, until the slippery mess is left in our broken palms.
II) The healing process for the heart is internal. Yes, we can spend a multitude of time under the multitude of darkness with friends procrastinating heartbreak. We will need to spend those nights in the corner. Yes, we can fill our time with friends and family, doing anything to cloud our reminiscence. We will need to stare blankly at the wall wondering where it all went wrong. If you take the heart out of the body it will operate externally. It will not fulfill any purpose.
III) The healing process for the machine is external. To break a machine, you must isolate the core and remove it. For a car, the engine. For a stove, the electricity. To fix a machine, you must identify the singular components to make the whole run. A machine is not an organism, it cannot repair itself. It will not stare at the wall and wonder where the spark went.
IV) How to know when a machine is working? Machines have a definitive task, when the end goal is reached then the machine is fixed. For a car, to drive. For a stove, to cook. When the machine completes the task, then the repair is successful. It is easy to see when a machine is not working, as the task cannot be completed.
V) How to know when a heart is working? For some people, their hearts may never work. The end goal for a heart to “work” is less clear, and a whole lot more obscure. When a heart is broken, a person may complete tasks daily, despite being deceptively fragmented. Hearts are a tricky thing you see, the natural reaction is to survive. A show of external strength is entirely contradictory to what is needed, the heart is the ultimate shade of camouflage.
VI) The heart can deceive, and continue to operate as though it was not bleeding. Smiles may be thrown around like cheap gifts to biding friends, but the sadness lingers underneath a curtain of sadness. Curtains can be pulled back, shifted, moved aside. Adaptation means that humans, unlike machines, can hide their failures, and can hide their bit-part daily performance. When the heart is broken it is a performance to keep going, not a task.
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