Understanding that a broken heart is an open heart can promote healing. When we are faced with a negative occurrence in our lives many of us have the tendency to close our hearts. A closed heart cannot heal, and the symptoms continue to worsen. Closed hearts live in resentment, which often leads to disease.
As Mandela reminded us: “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for our enemy to die.”
We are also conditioned to judge based on a variety of prejudices:
- Race
- Religion
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- Social class
When your heart is open, you DO NOT judge – judging is only achievable with a closed heart.
I remember writing in my journal soon after I lost my son Tariq to a senseless shooting: “There is nothing quite so painful as a broken heart, but a broken heart is an open heart – if one can learn to live with an open heart, gentle transformations begin to happen.”
Needless to say my heart was blown wide open! It literally felt like a nuclear bomb had denoted in my heart! But I understood at a very visceral level that a broken heart is an open heart. I have worked hard over the years to make sure my heart continues to remain open. And yes it is through the open heart that healing and gentle transformations have manifested in my life and continue to do so. There is no limit to how open your heart can become. So when a tragedy strikes or something negative happens in your life look at that as an opportunity to further open your hearts even wider. I have learned that living with an open heart, my life is substantially less stressful, and more days are spent in the flow!
Some years ago I gave a talk in Kalamazoo, Michigan to a room full of parents who had lost children. I started with my quote, as I knew there were many broken hearts in the audience. At the end of my talk a scholar at the Fetzer Institute who hosted me came up to me and said, “I was very moved with your opening quote, and it reminded me of a quote by Rumi. As you, like Rumi, are a Sufi, I am certain you know this quote.” My response was “Rumi was a prolific poet and has written over a 148,000 quotes, and while I know many I don’t of course know all of them, so please share with me which quote you are referring to.”
Rumi wrote: “God will break your heart over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until it stays open.”
In June in Charleston, South Carolina, all of our hearts were again broken. This was true especially with the hearts of the families, friends and the members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Charleston community. The loss of nine victims in one tragedy is huge to fathom, and we must offer prayers that the good Lord rest every slain soul in eternal peace and give strength to the families left behind to move forward in their absence. This is a difficult journey, but what moved me most was the sharing of compassion and forgiveness of the victim’s families. Needless to say they all had broken hearts, but in light of this massive devastating tragedy they chose not to close their hearts but to keep them wide open.
Maybe the lesson in this tragedy for all of humanity (as role modeled by these families) is to help us open our hearts. Even when we perceive we have open hearts there is no limit on how much more open our hearts can become. Why is it important to have an open heart? Because an open heart …
- Can transmit and receive love more easily
- Does not judge
- Does not discriminate
- Is not violent
- Exudes empathy, compassion and forgiveness
- Gives unconditionally
- Promotes its own healing
- Is a mark of a civil society
As Rumi points out, “God will continue to break our hearts until they stay open.”
The question we must individually and continually ask: “Is my heart open?”
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