Point The Blame At Your Heart

I write some poems, but not as many as others on Vocal. Most of my poems are about love—wanting love, sad love, or feelings of love. I think I am a big softie inside! Here we go. We blame love stuff on our hearts. We say “loving you with all my heart” and “you break my heart.” All love and feelings are linked to our hearts. We blame everything good or bad on hearts.

But really, hearts don't make us feel things; the brain does. Emotions and love seem to come from the heart, but actually, when we feel love or strong feelings, our brain releases chemicals. These chemicals travel in our blood and make our heart beat faster.

It wouldn’t be the same if we said, “I love you, in my brain,” or "you break my brain!”

Where did the heart idea start? Long ago, people thought feelings came from the heart. Greeks, a long time ago, wrote poems about love and their hearts. One poet named Sappho was sad about her broken heart, calling it a “mad heart that shakes with love.” She lived on an island called Lesbos and wrote poems, but most are lost now, except a few lines:

“Love shook my heart like the wind on the mountain shaking the trees."

Then the Romans had Venus, the goddess of love. They believed she made people feel many emotions with her son Cupid. Cupid shot arrows into hearts and made people fall in love.

They also thought the heart had a special vein called vena amoris. It was supposed to run from the heart to the fourth finger on the right hand. That’s why we wear rings there now, like love rings.

When we love, our bodies do funny things, like our hearts racing or us blushing. Smart thinkers like Aristotle and Plato thought that, too. Poets like Shakespeare also described these feelings. Today, the heart symbolizes love, passion, and life.

But the real heart? It doesn’t look like the heart symbol we see everywhere. That symbol became famous in 1977 with the “I love NY” logo.

Milton Glaser created that logo to help make New York feel better because the city had many problems. It encouraged people to visit.

In 1999, some people in Japan made emoji hearts for phones. Now, there are over 30 different kinds!

Since the brain doesn’t create the heart symbol, maybe that’s for the best. It's a better picture of love than body parts. But let's not think too much about that.

Bye-bye, till next time!