Hearts Still Care

Mary Poppins was a wonderful movie. It took me to a place where the lost things go. It reminded me of why I was called Peter Pan by a friend so many years ago.

In the middle of life, I grew up somewhere, some time, and I lost perspective of the things that mattered.

Friends and siblings have grown up. The conundrum is that I look for independence and maturity in people I choose to build bonds with. I look down upon the ones who don’t think, who hope extensively. But I’ve also realized, especially when faced with people who are alien to emotion and responses based on the heart, I do not think that they will be happy in life.

I set a lot of score in things that have no real tangible source of happiness. A good wad of cash gets good things that are wanted, tangible, things that can be touched and – perhaps even loved. But these things, along with the cash, do not really matter, in the end. We are human beings – unfortunately – and we need love and we need the succour provided by the Other.

Death becomes final, if there is no love. Memory makes the person immortal. Experience and history are what carries you into the future, into existence forever. The poets and the writers and the painters tried to capture this into art and transcribe it into the tangible. I have known people who have moved away from sensibility and into sense, but I have also seen them despondent and eventually, I have seen them float into the sphere of feeling, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately and sometimes, fighting tooth and nail.

I have seen how sense takes flight and sensibility takes over, with a vengeance. It is almost as if she wants to wreck love with a violence. She seeks to punish, and she feels it is right as is her wont. But I have dealt with emotion my entire life. I grow weary of her. Sense has come to me while sensibility has been told to wait in the corner. I haven’t discarded her. I just wanted to talk a bit with her sister. It is as Mary Poppins says, it is the time between the dark and light. And sensibility hides quietly.

Some people I loved died, and some, tragically, have grown up. Yes. These elite have no need now of sensibility. They haven’t just taken a break from her… or so they like to think. They wish to do without her. They wish to draw boundaries. They wish for rules. Lines. Space. Independence. Finding themselves. But they do not realise that sense isn’t the only thing that will lead them to peace and fruition.

I know that when my child died in the middle of my home, she left for good. The floor she lay on is just a floor. The home she breathed her last is just a house. Sense asks me to know that death is final. Dreams are dreams and fears are unfounded. But somewhere from the dark within, sensibility whispers, gone but not forgotten. Trust, she says. Love, she reminds. And I turn to the dark, searching for the place where the lost things go. And I trust and I love and find her in me – sitting right next to Peter.