The Heart and The Machine.

Did you know that a heart is a lot like a machine? Now, I’m not talking about the sort of heart that goes thump-thump and pumps blood (though I suppose it bears its own resemblances to machinery in its own biological sort of way). I’m talking about that part of a person that loves and hates. That part of a being that feels. Or doesn’t feel as the case may be.

It was this very “not feeling” that I was reflecting on today when I realized that I had never really understood the greater implications of that phrase “a broken heart.” I mean, when I had thought of a broken heart I had always thought of the typical tears in the eyes, knots in the stomach, and ache in the chest. The typical expressions of inner agony and a heart in anguish. But as I thought longer about it, the thought came to me that a broken heart was very much that – broken. Not broken as in rended with a huge crack down the middle as it is usually pictured, but broken in the sense that it doesn’t work. Or at least that it doesn’t work right.

A heart is a far cry from being anything close to mechanical, but in the sense that a machine can break down in such a way as to be unable to carry on with its particular function, so the heart is unable to do its job after it is broken. A broken heart shuts down just like a malfunctioning machine, though not without its own warning. Where gears and belts might squeal and squeak and squawk the heart screams and bleeds and cries in its own way, but after all that it just quits working. Like its run out of fuel or blown a gasket. And then, just as the gears no longer grind and turn, the heart no longer feels. It doesn’t know how to feel. And so even when the life starts to come back into it, those feelings go all askew because the heart doesn’t know what they are or what even to do with them. It isn’t sure if they are good or bad, it isn’t sure if they will hurt or not – it doesn’t know if it should even be feeling anything at all. For all it knows it was broken for good and all of this feeling is just some sort of sick joke to revive it enough to be able to break it again. And certainly some hearts believe that lie, and stay broken forever.

But the truth of the matter is that even the most broken of hearts can heal. Even the ones that have been shattered to a point that they are unrecognizable are not unredeemable. They can be fixed back up just like a machine if there is time, effort, and care enough to do so. All it takes is the right tools in the right hands. And that is how a heart is a lot like a machine.