Our hearts take such a beating throughout our lives

Our hearts take such a beating throughout our lives. It’s a wonder they last nearly as long
as they do. We put ourselves through so much, making promises to our future selves that we’ll
be happy and healthy. “So much is held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day,
an hour, a moment” (Doyle 148). We go on gathering love and the pains that inevitably go with it
and fill our souls with so much happiness, so many thoughts, and an incredible amount of
sadness. I’ve always believed that in order to truly feel what an emotion is capable of, you have
to experience its exact opposite emotion.
The fifth paragraph in Joyas Voladoras goes on to explain different species which signify
the different types of people we have in this world. This is the part of the essay that brings

Stamper 6
together all of what he’s been trying to describe metaphorically. “We all churn inside” (Doyle
148). We’re all the same on the inside, but we all choose different paths and different speeds to
get there.
Doyle’s representation of the heart and all of its magnificence and difficulties, makes this
essay a metaphorical masterpiece. When I finally came to the realization that Doyle was actually
speaking about how humans cope and interact with others I was immediately reminded how
certain events in our lives can have hard physical effects that stem from an emotional cause.
None of us are ever fully immune to the effects that human interactions, or lack thereof, can have
on our state of being. But, even knowing that we will get them torn out in the end, we gladly
accept the hope that we will find what we’re searching for, and give our hearts to chance.
The sixth and final paragraph is where Doyle tells the reader to live every single moment
of life. “We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart” (Doyle 148). I feel
we do this as a defense mechanism. This is how we gauge people and try to understand them
before we let them try to understand us. “You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard
and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant” (Doyle 148). We
get taken by surprise by someone at some time and it tears the wall down without us even
knowing it. It happens so suddenly that we almost can’t even tell what happened. Like the
Grinch or Mr. Scrooge , something forces us out of our bricked up house to make the change that
our hearts already decided to make. “Felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath,
the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you” (Doyle 148). Memories
and the emotions tied to them will constantly keep us looking on.

Works Cited
Doyle, Brian. “Joyas Voladoras.” Ways of Reading. 10 th ed. Ed. David Bartholomae, Anthony
Petrosky, and Stacey Waite. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014. 146-149. Print.