Take Heart
Just like my cat, I carry a plump pink perpetual pump everywhere I go. It delivers the beat to my own unique dance. A blind and timeless clock, triggered long ago by a random cosmic spark.
A couple of years back, after more than two billion beats, it began to falter. A little tired, perhaps forgetful, it occasionally dropped a beat before recalling the rhythm and lurching onward. What better way to remind the bearer of their frailty, their transience, their loves - than to be made mindful of the pulse we seldom hear, except in moments of fear and passion. Or to be acquainted with the pulse we cannot see, when a beepy bedside monitor transposes the mystery into a lone neon line dancer.
These days, a tiny daily pill maintains the critical rhythm of my mortality, whilst all that I love, and those that love me, nourish the essential lifeforce that drives it onward.
Twice, my heart has shared space with another: once as the passenger, once as the vehicle. Do we carry deep within us the memory of the original mother beat? Does that in turn echo the pulse of the universe?
To the ancient Egyptians, ‘hati’, the heart, was the most important body part - the seat of our consciousness, our intelligence, our emotion, our soul. It recorded all our deeds ready for judgement in the afterlife, where it would be weighed against a feather. If you were lucky, your good deeds would have accumulated sufficient lightness for you to become an immortal.
Today I was reminded of the phenomenon of ‘collective effervescence’, when we share an uplifting herd experience of energy and harmony, euphoria, and even cardiac synchrony with others, through music, chanting, singing, dance, sport, ritual, religion, and general Awe and Wonder. However fleeting, such experiences no doubt contribute to happier, more connected and meaningful lives. O how powerful we all could be …
I’m sure I shared a minor effervescence with my cat last night, his small heart beating close to mine, as under a sliver of moon, we tuned in to the deep rock & roll of the river and the mournful chorus of a pair of owls.
Just for the record, a blue whale heart beats 8 times in a minute, an elephant’s 30 times, whilst a human comes in at 75 , a cat at 160, an owl at 400, a mouse at 500, and a hummingbird at 1200. Planet Earth has a pulse of 27.5 million years, the next beat being due ‘roughly’ 20 million years in the future.
And an eagle owl can hear the heartbeat of a mouse from 400 metres.