Heart

As the words of the song say, “You gotta have heart, miles and miles and miles of heart.”

Again, lets check the dictionary. Lets see, it says: the emotional or moral as distinguished from the intellectual nature as generous disposition . A capacity for sympathy or generosity; compassion.

All right, now that we have Mr. Webster et. al. out of the way, let me say that heart is closely related to reverence. This subject may be a little more difficult to talk about because many of the concepts involved are abstract. But we shall endeavor to make them as concrete as possible.

We have all heard sayings like, “He is all heart,” or, “He has no heart,” or, “He has a heart of gold,” or, “A stone cold heart,” or “A heart of stone,” or, “It has touched my heart.” All of these sayings have one thing in common. They all refer to how someone deals with the world on a feeling level. And in this case, the intellect goes straight out of the window. That is, if a person is working through heart. In the case of no heart or heart of stone, it is exactly the opposite, the person is operating totally through their intellect and either has no feelings, or ignores and suppresses them completely. Of course, most people operate somewhere between these two extremes.

So heart is really feelings, compassion, caring about others and their welfare.

Lets take some examples. I will describe a situation, then I will show how a person who operates totally through intellect will handle them and how a person who operates totally through heart would handle the same situation.

Mr. X owns a small business. He has a secretary and a receptionist as well as other employees. The receptionist operates the switchboard and greets visitors and does typing as well in her spare time. One morning he brings a stack of hand written paperwork to her and tells her that it has to be typed and go out that day. That day, the switchboard is particularly busy and there are far more visitors than normal. The woman works through her lunch period trying to get the typing done, but because of the extra load of her primary duties she is unable to finish the job in time. When Mr X finds out that she did not finish the typing and get the paperwork out on time, he gets mad and fires her.

Mr. Y owns a small business. He has a secretary and a receptionist as well as other employees. The receptionist operates the switchboard and greets visitors and does typing as well in her spare time. One morning he brings a stack of hand written paperwork to her and tells her that it has to be typed and go out that day. That day, the switchboard is particularly busy and there are far more visitors than normal. The woman works through her lunch period trying to get the typing done, but because of the extra load of her primary duties she is unable to finish the job in time. When Mr Y finds out that she did not finish the typing and get the paperwork out on time, he says that he is sorry, that he should have checked her progress and made sure that she was going to be able to finish the job on time.

Which man was working through heart and which one through intellect?

The economy is in a downswing. Unemployment is high. A man stands on a street corner. His features are gaunt, his clothing is worn and ill fitting, baggy. A prosperous looking man approaches and the man on the corner asks, “Mister, can you spare a little change?” The other man glances at him and snaps, “Get a job,” and continues on his way. The next person that comes along is a young man who is also out of work, but has only been that way for a short time and still has unemployment compensation coming in. “Mister, can you spare a little change?” The young man stops and looks, then digs a dollar bill out of his pocket. “I am out of work too. This is my last dollar, but I get my unemployment tomorrow. You look like you need this more than I do.” He gives the beggar the dollar and continues on his way. The beggar now has a dollar, certainly not enough for a meal. Then another prosperous looking man comes by. “Mister, can you spare a little change?” The man stops and looks at him. “How long has it been since you have had a decent meal?” he asks. “Gee, Mister, I don’t know, it has been a long time,” is the reply. The man leads him to a nearby restaurant, sits him down and buys him a good meal. While the beggar is eating, he asks, “How long have you been out of work?” The beggar replies around a mouthful of food, “It has been a little over a year now, there just don’t seem to be any jobs available and I have looked everywhere.” The other man digs a small notepad and a pen out of his pocket and scribbles a note. Then he tears the paper out, folds it over and writes an address on it. Giving it to the beggar, he says, “Come to this address in the morning and give this note to the receptionist.” The next morning he shows up bright and early, hands the note to the receptionist and she reads, “Give this man a job starting today. And give him a 25% advance on his first pay check today.” It was signed by the president of the company.

Lets talk about the beggars three encounters. Let us take the first encounter. How do you think that he was operating? Certainly, his actions read no heart.

How about the second encounter? How was that young man operating?

Although he could not do much, he did everything that he could. I would say all heart.

How about the third encounter. What do you think of him?

Certainly this man acted with compassion. Now he could likely have afforded to give the beggar a couple hundred dollars and gone on his way. Instead, he fed the man and made certain that he had something to tide him over, and most importantly, gave him the opportunity to rebuild his own self respect. So the third man encountered was operating somewhere between the extremes, but on the side of heart and compassion.

A person with no heart can actually perceive things which a normal person would consider to be evil as being good. And thereby they can end up doing a lot of harm. This statement would lead you to believe that a person who was all heart could do nothing but good, after all the two are opposites. But this is not the case. A person who is all heart, in their attempt to do good, can end up doing harm as well. Let me explain that. Lets take the case of the beggar down on his luck. Now this is a man who has always worked for a living and been fairly happy to do so. He has been a productive member of society. But he has been out of work for a long time and has actually become homeless. He may even have reached such a state that he is no longer capable of performing any work. So along comes a person who is all heart. They take pity on him and feed him. In the process, they learn that he is homeless, so they give him a place to stay and continue to feed him and furnish his needs. The beggar starts regaining his strength and starts putting weight back on. And decides that he has got it made. After all, all that he has to do is watch television, eat and sleep. He becomes a leach. And the person who is all heart continues to take care of him. So in an attempt to do good, the person of all heart has actually done harm.

What I am getting at here is that a balance is needed, which will be the subject of another dissertation.

Joyce Chandler