Share your heart even if it is broken

This morning, while browsing through the papers my eyes caught the picture of comedian actress, Amy Poehler in the front page of the Recruit section. Head-lined as “Share your heart”, the article featured the entire transcript of her convocation speech for the Harvard College graduating class of 2011.

I read through the article and was impressed. I later did a search and found the link to play the video so I could watch and listen to her speaking.

http://gradspeeches.com/2011/harvard-university/amy-poehler

In my line of work in the education business, I have attended more than my share of graduation events. Ms Poehler’s graduation speech was by far the best that I have heard. She treated her audience with a stream of beautifully crafted personal messages, delivered with humour, great aplomb and well-timed punchlines.

While obviously written for young aspiring graduands, the part that struck some resonance with me was "Continue to share your heart with people even if it has been broken. Don't treat your heart like an action figure wrapped in plastic and never used." 

Tell me about sharing your heart.

Alright, she was probably referring to heartbreaks from crushes or maybe career setbacks that many young aspiring graduates might have gone through. Less of the scale of bereaving a loved one or as in my case, a wonderful spouse of many years.

If I could be so bold as to comment on Ms Poehler’s advice, dipping into my own tragic experience for good measure. I would add that if your heart is truly broken, you would not keep it under wraps. You would have this need and propensity to share, to speak to people and lay bare the pain.

The internet has provided a convenient outlet, which explains the many grief sites I have chanced upon. And I too attempt to share my thoroughly “used” and broken heart, through my regular postings.

But where it comes to sharing in real life, reality presents a few obstacles.

I found that very few people really care or try to understand.

From these past five months of my limited widower experience, I have come to accept that nobody, unless they had suffered similar bereavements, could really fathom the impact of losing a long-time spouse.  More so, most people I know preferred to skirt around the matter. I could sense their discomfort in conversation. But I do not blame them. I think they are anxious and fearful of saying the wrong thing and upset me more. I have lost track of the number of times with various friends, associates and even relatives when I tried to talk about my belated wife, the conversation would get stone-walled or deflected towards something else.  Most people are clueless as to what to say or how to respond. There is no frame of reference to turn to.

But I think the real reason that most people do not really care is because we are basically made that way.  We are biologically programmed to be self-centred. The well-known evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkin in his book entitled, “The Selfish Gene” has expounded that our human race are basically “survival machines, robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes”. Hence, we are “born selfish” out of necessity to keep up our own survival rates.

Or it could be I am getting what I really deserve, after all how much genuine care have I given or shown to the people around me? Instant Karma, as the late great John Lennon has put in song.


More likely it is a little of all of the above.

It is useful for me to put it all in perspective, so I would understand myself and others better. That way I would not harbour any anger or bitterness and learn to deal with coping with the grief largely on my own. After all it is my life and Jenny was my wife, so it is really my burden to bear.  It will be a long and lonely journey, I pretty much know this by now.

I would share my thoroughly shattered heart with anyone who can spare the time to listen and lend a shoulder. 

But then again you would have chores to do and dinner to prepare, so never mind, I will be fine for now…