I love that song, "You Gotta Have Heart," From the musical Damn Yankees. But that does not surprise anyone who knows me well. I have clashed with people for years over whether the world and its people are mostly bad or good. I opt for good, and there is only one requirement for living the good life, and that is “heart.”
You’ve Gotta’ Have Heart
“I'd be tender, I'd be gentle And awful sentimental Regarding love and art I'd be friends with the sparrows And the boy that shoots the arrows If I only had a heart.”*
I can remember those lyrics like it was yesterday. The “clanking, clattering, caliginous collection of tin” in the Wizard of Oz—the Tin Man, my patron saint-- utters them as he searches for a heart.
I had also heard the Scarecrow ask for a brain, and had yet to hear the leonine Bert Lahr ask for courage. But of all the qualities those personalities sought—the heart seemed the most important to me.
I was also impressed at the end of the movie when the “wizard” presented his testimonial to a very grateful Tin Man. It was a heart-shaped watch and its ticking simulated the beating of that most important organ.
Through the years I gradually adopted that symbol as my totem. I don’t know where it began, but the heart symbol and my name are synonymous to my good friends. Small heart-shaped trinkets are some of my proudest possessions from friends who were quick to realize how powerful the symbol was for me.
Why do I go on so about hearts? Because they are important. Because everybody really does need one. It is heart that sees you through life’s calamities. It is heart that gives you the courage to love. It is your heart that is broken when love goes awry, and it is your heart that continues to beat, even though you’d rather it wouldn’t. But that constant beating becomes your reminder that you really are alive, and should act like it.
Think of how America has incorporated this word into its fabric. We have in the mid-west the “heartland.” We place our hands over our hearts when we pledge our allegiance. We have “heartfelt thanks,” and “home is where the heart is,” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco .” One “searches one’s heart,” “follows one’s heart,” and does or doesn’t “have the heart” to perform some task or duty. One can have a “heart as big as all outdoors,” or be “cold-hearted,” or a “black-hearted scoundrel.” The whole world has seen the importance of the heart and put that word in its lexicon.
It scares me that some people seem to function without a heart. They can cut emotions off like a faucet and bottle everything up inside. They put emphasis on the intellect, on brain power, and how smart people can be or how they can be out-smarted. They favor guile over emotion, how to think over how to feel.
These people do not seem to realize that the brain can not exist without the heart. That outstanding organ of intellect can’t function without the steady pulse, the heartbeat, if you will, that ultimately signals life or death.
What will it be—Life or Death? Do not be nonplused by Life. I believe you should choose the pulse; it will sustain you all your days. Rally to the Latin aphorism and "seize the day." I believe that’s what we must do. Our life must be a long string of action words. We must “seize,” “do,” “explore,” “achieve,” “stretch,” “try,” “live,” “love,” but most of all “feel.”
Surviving any disaster or heartbreak of my life taught me this lesson. I can urge people to have a heart, but the cold reality of the universe is that my pleas will not cause them to take a better path. They must find that Yellow Brick Road by themselves. To do it, it is true they will need brains and courage, but most importantly, in the words of that 50’s hit tune from Damn Yankees—
“You've gotta have heart Miles 'n miles n' miles of heart. . .”
*If I Only Had a Heart - Song from 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz; Music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E. Y. "Yip" Harburg