The Heart of Poe

"Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts."
-Edgar Allan Poe

Photo credit: google.com/images and google.com/images

This week I decided to go along with one of my favorite poets of all time.  Though it's difficult to get a picture of him that doesn't look sort of creepy...this one I thought wasn't too bad. He's got this sort of half smile thing going on, better than the rest of the pictures.

The topic this week? The heart.  Have you ever actually thought about your heart and love?  When I see this it always makes me think of two other quotes.  The first one I think about is the one that I saw flying around the internet a few years ago that basically said love is dangerous because of what it does to your heart.  It talked about how making your heart beat so fast that you feel like you can't breathe is dangerous and how you should feel that way when you're in love.  Now, I don't know if everyone feels like that when they're in love....I think it's more of an issue of being nervous around that person when you first meet them and get to know them.

The second concept I think of is how we say that the heart and the mind are always in a constant battle. But the funny part is, we don't actually mean our physical heart or our brain, we talk about them figuratively.  We say things like our heart wants that person but our mind is telling us that it's wrong or bad.  When you think about it, it's a little silly, yet it's kind of true.

Are we always having this constant war within us?  Which side do you usually give in to?  We're always being told to "follow your heart," but is that really what we should be doing all the time? Does that always lead to happiness? I don't really know the answers to these questions, and I have to wonder if anybody ever knows the answers by the time their life is over.

Poe is talking about both the physical aspect and the figurative aspect of "the heart."  It's an odd combination, in my opinion, the way he talks about the figurative heart wanting things, but then adds that physical connection to it by saying that it stops and starts when it wants things.  It's almost like humanizing the figurative heart, but we already have a physical heart.  It's odd, yet kind of fascinating.  

Our figurative heart is always craving things like love and different desires.  We portray this by saying "I'm heart broken," even though love can't physically break your heart, and "I love this person with all my heart," when in reality, it isn't your heart per-say that loves something or someone, it's the emotional aspect of your mind.

But the whole difference between your "mind" and your "brain" is a completely different argument.  However, the concept is still the same.  What are the differences between your physical heart and your figurative heart? Why do we make associations like this?

I believe that at some point in most of our lives we have to stop and think for a second about what our figurative heart wants and if it scares us or not, which it may.  But I can't help but wonder, if something you want terrifies you, should you really go for it like everyone says you should?

There are a lot of questions about this quote that can lead you around in never ending circles just because it's complex, even though it's only a few words.  But I love quotes like this, they really get you to stop and think about them for a minute.

And just for ha-ha's