Y Ddraig Goch

Sept 23 - The heart and the ocean

Prompt: Heart and the Ocean - “Your heart is like the ocean, mysterious and dark.” Bob Dylan In what ways is your heart like the ocean? Are you aware of every single thing that your heart holds inside it?

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I have to be honest, I first thought this was the quote from Titanic…

Bob Dylan forgot the “and dangerous” part about the ocean. Interestingly, ‘mysterious, dark, and dangerous’ also describes my taste in book-boyfriends…

The ocean is vast – as is the ‘hearts’ capacity to love – which is what Dylan is talking about.

I doubt he was referring to a physical heart, though you could argue the heart is as vital to our own survival as the ocean is to the world. There is no life without it. At least, one worth living in. Conveniently the same can be said about our metaphorical hearts. The poetic symmetry has a undisputable elegance to it.

Love, like the ocean, can be many things depending on… well everything. The ocean is possibly the most powerful force on the planet, and yet it’s affected and influenced by everything that goes on around it: weather (though this is a circular affect), pollutants, and the moon… a possible tangent to friends & family, trauma, and hormones.

Love can be all consuming, alluring, and dangerous. It can be calm and enduring. Tempestuous and ferocious. Unexplored and uncharted, yet feels like home. A force of nature that’s hard to steer against. Affected by outside forces that we have little control over. And sometimes, full of scary ‘monsters’ and wrecks from our past… no? Just me then… And sometimes it’s full of sunken treasure.

It’s a good comparison.

I don’t think anyone could successfully audit a heart. It’s too messy. I think it’s a bit like Mary Poppin’s bag… it’s much bigger on the inside and holds so much more than you think it does; you keep pulling out random crap that you completely forgot was there. Sometimes it’s a nice surprise or memory, other times it’s like you just found one of the kid’s half chewed sweets, half wrapped up… and you pull that universal face of disgust.

My point is, it’s rare that you swap one love out for another. Your heart just keeps expanding and filling up with different experiences and people as you navigate life; spouses, parents, siblings, kids, pets, friends, best-friends, ex-boy/girlfriends, places, and hobbies. The things you love and that make you feel alive. There is room for it all.