Where Do Broken Hearts Go?

As I get older I tend to understand life a little more…or at least the life that I’ve created for myself. And when it comes to love, men and relationships–someone always wants to know: “Where do broken hearts go?” We can all sit around listening to Whitney Houston songs to find the answer or we can just look around and realize that the answer is sitting closer to us than we think.

A good friend recently quoted Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” And it’s this specific quote that, to me, explains the broken heart. A broken heart doesn’t mean your life is over and you won’t ever love again or that you’re not worthy of love–it means the opposite–that you gave the essence of who you are to another soul and truly allowed yourself to be vulnerable with another human being. It was a moment in your life where your heart felt a strong vibration to another and tried to connect. But, if we’ve learned anything from AT&T, not every connection is successful and we encounter the dropped call of love.

Yes, you can take a cue from a Hollywood movie and follow their recipe for heartache–like Grease for example. We can all put on our long Mormon-like white nightgown with a ribbon in our hair while swishing pink-perfumed stationary in a kiddie pool singing about our love affair gone awry or you can accept the fact that love changes color more often than Lady Gaga changes wigs and move on.

I subscribe to the theory that love, just like we humans, changes and evolves–so it stands to reason that as we change, so does our definition of love and what we want out of love. In kindergarten exchanging a valentine card is all we needed to prove love between one another, in the 5th grade it was all about sitting next to one another during lunch, and maybe during high school is was “doing it” behind the football bleaches during 4th period–ah, ain’t love grand? But as you evolve your ideas about love change, a valentine’s card ain’t gonna cut it at age 34 and sitting next to them during lunch won’t cultivate romance. Enter: the break up and the broken hearted.

As Kierkegaard explains…it’s not until we look back that we can understand certain things but how about using that knowledge to launch ourselves forward. Your broken heart proves that you have the capability to love. How amazing is that? Take a moment to really think about that fact. And guess what? In life, you’re gonna have the opportunity to prove that over and over again–it’s just they way things are–but don’t despair; you’re not alone. If we look around, even right now–someone near you is suffering from a broken heart and they’ll be fine, eventually–just like we all are.

See, you can’t cheat life out of grieving your heartache but you can move forward. And your heart may be a little scared, but it’ll be ready to dial and make another connection soon enough. And about the location of those broken heart–just look around you–they’re there.

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