“To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” ― Daniel Patrick Moynihan
“Sell my heart to the junk man and give my love to Rose.” — John Prine, ‘Please Don’t Bury Me’
Getting your heart broken early and often is a great gift. It is a means to survival.
You break a horse to make it rideable. You break in a baseball glove to make it more receptive to rocket line-drives or errant throws. You break in a new car engine before it can achieve peak performance. Professional fighters have to learn how to “take a punch”. Football players know well that their pregame jitters resolve with the first hard hit. The Japanese concept of “Kintsugi” gilds the breaks in pottery art to make the cracks things of beauty. Broken bones that mend are stronger.
And so it is with the heart.
Heartbreak makes you resilient to heartbreak. And in life, the heartbreak never ceases. And you bounce back more quickly each time. Until you don’t. But that only comes in time, after many comebacks.
As Pat Benatar sang, “Hit me with your best shot.”
C’mon — try me! I can take it.
#heartbreak #resilience #icantakeit #love #failure
(Dedicated to those who have broken my heart.)