It’s oh so poetical to say our emotions are in our heart. This leads to sometimes stupid symbolism like “Show me the shape of your heart.”
But probably the most famous metaphor is to say you are heartbroken when somebody you love doesn’t care for your feelings. This is a silly metaphor because we all know that when a real heart is broken you will die.
Now some of you are probably frothing at the bit to tell me heart transplants can lead to multiple loves for the heart symbol. But are you seriously telling me there are fewer loves on this planet than there are people? Experience should tell you otherwise.
I say why not change organs for our metaphors. How about a gall bladder? You can live with your gall bladder removed, so why not make it the seat of emotion?
You can then have many loves and losses and thus get a more realistic love life than the heart metaphor provides.
It’s just that the first time you have your gall bladder “broken”, it will be orders of magnitude more important than the 2nd or 3rd time. Because breaking your gall bladder a 2nd or 3rd time is really not that important when it is dead and can’t feel already.
So how about the kidneys? There are two of them so you can get your kidney broken more than once. Indeed, there might even be hope for the serial monogamists amongst you. With kidney transplants you can have a round 3 or even 4 of love.
There are places in the developing world where you can buy a kidney and the operation to put it to use. And there are places in the developing world to get a mail order bride and that can lead to a love.
And what about this? If your kidney is operated on, perhaps you could get a surgeon to make one end pointy and the other will remain bulbous. With two kidneys like this, you could put the two pointy ends together and the combination would look more like the “heart shape” than a real heart.
Which reminds me that I laughed when the movie “I Heart Huckabees” came out. I was so entranced by that shape, that I though it was more accurate than the love in the “I love NY” campaign. But really both are silly translations of the “heart shape”. How about “I ’emotional seat’ Huckabees”. Or “I ’emotional seat’ NY”.
And I know there are other organs. And indeed people talk about “gut feelings”. So maybe you will make up your own metaphor for the seat of emotions. I’ll stick with my kidneys and the rest of the world will undoubtedly stick with their heart and heart shape.
All this when we know all along the brain and the hormonal system is largely responsible for all emotions.
