We all have a reserve of love that is expressed indiscriminately at our birth. This is what is commonly known as the purity or innocence of children. How is it that we sometimes lose this reservoir of benevolence and compassion that we are all provided with when we are born?
The first answer to this is our education: we are taught to train our heads well, but our hearts are neglected in most public education.
Because the qualities of the heart are no longer solicited and often repressed, we lose this great benefit. We must therefore understand that the heart grows when we use it: physically (it is a muscle, that’s for sure) and metaphorically (it functions like the engine of a car).
To keep the metaphorical resources of the heart, you have to love on a daily basis. Just as an engine gets dirty and becomes less efficient if we neglect it, the heart loses its power when we no longer use it.
A car to “stay in shape” needs to drive, an itinerary, a destination. Our metaphorical heart works in the same way, it needs to love, it needs an object to exist, whether it is a friend, a living being, a stranger, God, our wife or husband. Thus, it is necessary to “think” every day with one’s heart. It is necessary to train him to love on a daily basis.
Just as a car can encounter difficult terrain because it is rocky or sandy, the heart of a human being can find it difficult to be compassionate for this or that person because he or she does not have the virtues that we appreciate. However, we must strive to love, and it is in these conditions that we experience the amplitude of our heart. What should we think of the engine of a vehicle that would only be confronted with well-paved motorways? We couldn’t really know what it has “under the bonnet”. It is only when the car leaves the beaten track that we know its strength and train it for rally competitions. The heart is the same, it needs adversity to function and improve.
