Of things lost and not found again: Time and our hearts

As we age, we begin yielding and surrendering parts and pieces of ourselves to the cruel hands of the clock, to the ravages of unforgiving time. Hair and skin slough off and drop out of us insidiously yet relentlessly. Shot through by the arrow of time, we lose the limberness of our limbs, the sprightliness of our strides, the bounce and buoyancy of our bounds. In the course of our life, there come seasons when we, quite at loose ends, are called upon to shed tears or to shed blood.

Even as we speak, we lose time—the seconds, minutes, and hours fly and fritter fast away like angry birds, never to return. We were young and loose-limbed once, and we will never experience a second spring again. Youth, sweet, sweet bird that got away, will forever be a far, distant Shangri-La, a horizon irretrievably lost to us. Youth, beauty, fame: these things we lose to the four winds of fickle fate.

There are times when we tend to lose ourselves in thought and reverie. During some unguarded moments, we tend to lose control of our senses, lose our marbles or lose our minds. We sometimes lose our bearing and our balance, our sense of purpose and direction. We lose our way in the woods, and we lose ourselves in a world full of men who do not know where they want to go.

We live in times where men nonchalantly cede their morals and yield their principles at the drop of a hat, choosing to become loose cannons for the price of a song, however discordant or atonal it may be. Very many men have lost their fear of God.

We may lose a bargain, or we may lose a bet. We lose money, jobs, opportunities, fortunes, friends, and lovers. Many of us get lost in the blue fog of convention and conformity, lost in the purple rain of blind obedience, never to be found.

Often, we lose our hearts to the utter folly and foolishness of falling in love with what turns out to be false or fake. The heart is like a lost child, a fool, a silly thing that can be tricked or deceived by just about anybody with a modicum of guile, guts, and gumption. So very blind, naïve, and gullible is the heart that it will readily and repeatedly fall for love scams as if these were the choicest cheese, pâté, and caviar being served on a silver platter.

A boil that torments us is lanced and pierced; tumors and cancers that endanger our lives are excised, cut out and cut off. Why can’t we lose the one thing that hurts us in the profoundest and most loathsome way imaginable—our hearts? When faced with danger, why can’t we discard our hearts like a lizard’s tail, a starfish’s arm, or a lobster’s shell when it molts? Why can’t we cast loose these hurtful emotions as effortlessly as we shed our hair and skin, as gracefully as trees that let fall their leaves in the fall?

Why can’t we unburden ourselves of this blasted organ, the mere size of a fist clenched in wrath, this needy, whiny, pitiful thing that beats incessantly and unceasingly to the rhythm of “Love me, Love me not”? When we are fighting a losing battle against hair fall or hair loss daily, why oh why can’t we lose our hearts?