a heavy heart

i've heard many poets and song writers lament about their heavy hearts. i can identify to a point. i understand what they mean, poetically. but where my actual experience differs is here, my heart has never felt light. perhaps it was born heavier than most. i think perhaps Dr. Seuss was wrong in his estimation of the size of grinch's heart. maybe it wasn't two sizes too small. i offer the hypothesis here that it might have been three sizes too large. when the heart is too large, it is not overly loving, not looking to take more into itself. in fact it is the rest of the system that takes a hit from the oversized heart. the right ventrical pulsates into the lung, making breathing labored. the left atrium pushes against the aorta, strangling the now barely oxygenated blood, thus choking the organs. everything in you gasping for breath.

this breathless life leaves little room for openness, lovingness. the grinch, i believe, suffered from just this ailment. as do i. and moreover, the longer one suffers from an enlarged heart, the heavier it becomes, the more it swells, the less breath there is to go around. it is in this way that one strangles oneself from the inside.

this begs the question, then, of how the grinch reversed this disordered heart condition. if we stand on my original hypothesis logic would lead us to believe that somehow he was able to reduce the size of the heart enough to allow it to release its choke hold on his breath. now if we take the animated version of this tale as having any kind of truth to share, we are to surmise that this cure came from watching the who's love from afar.

now this i take issue with, again. as i have loads of experience watching love from afar, as did grinch. we watch and we both envy and deny. neither lead to this awakening remedy.

so perhaps dr. seuss was wrong on more than just the one account (what is he a doctor of anyway?). i'll give that from the outside this transition may have looked to be a heart growing from watching another's love, but that may just be the summation of a loving who who could not see anything less loving as true.