The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants

Someone once told me that the heart wants what the heart wants. I don’t know if that is a line from a book or a movie, it could be. Then again it might be one of those pithy statements that people come up with. I’d ask the person who told me but I can quite remember who said it. Hell, it might have even been
me.

The heart wants what the heart wants. You know what that means? It is a statement made by people who can’t explain why they are in love with person xyz. It is what you say when there is no logical explanation for your actions. It is a catchphrase, a tagline, a slogan and a motto.

The heart wants what the heart wants. It reminds me of Shakespeare, “Life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” Somewhere my high school English teacher Mrs. McDonnell is smiling. Little Jimmy actually remembered a line from Macbeth. See ma’am, I told you that I could hear just as well in sunglasses as without..

The heart wants what the heart wants. It is the kind of thing you hear people say when they are trying to explain why they are hung up on someone from their past. Or maybe it is what you say when you stop denying the love that is in front of you.

If love were rational, if it were based upon logic life would be easier. When I think about some of the things I have done because of love I want to scream. When I consider the self-inflicted misery I have endured I want to cry because it seems so very foolish. How could I waste so much energy on such a silly thing as a woman, a single woman. The world is filled with millions of women. It should be easy to replace her. It should be as simple as changing shoes, but it is not. It is not, it is not.

The heart wants what the heart wants. It does and mine has chosen someone that is far more special to me than all of the others. My lips remember hers. I can still feel her touch. The pillowcase has never been washed because I have this fantasy that I can still pull it close and smell her.

Sometimes I think that reincarnation must be real and that in a past life I must have stolen fire from the gods or committed some other heinous crime. Because there is no logical reason why I would be punished in this manner. I found the woman that completes me. I found the person that makes me whole and I let her go.

She would have stayed. She would have held my hand. She would have helped save my soul but I couldn't say the words. I couldn't make myself do it. Even though I knew it to be a simple thing. A brief plea for help and she wouldn't have left me. I wouldn't have been left to live in shadow and night. I could have been whole. Her love was enough to let me believe that I could have been something more.

But like I said, in that past life I did something. I earned the wrath of those who sit in judgment. Or maybe it is nothing like that. Maybe there is no reason why. Maybe this is all there is and happiness is based upon some sort of random something or other.

The heart wants what it wants and mine has betrayed me. In a different life it lay in a green garden beneath bright blue skies and now it is filled with weeds and fields of shattered stone and black night skies.

Once I might have hoped for salvation. Once I believed that I deserved better than this but now I understand that not to be so. Hades has issued his decree. I stand next to Sisyphus. Tantalus is my brother. Happiness is something that I can see but can't reach.

The heart wants what the heart wants.

(You can find more posts like this at TheJackB by searching for Fragments of Fiction)

35 comments:

Deadman said...

Love it.

Anonymous said...

“The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants” means love is driven from the heart, not logic. The “heart” refers to the source of feelings and emotions, such as love. But the “heart” is also the symbolic source of good, perseverance, courage, determination. “Wants” comes from the determination quality emanating from the “heart”. In this case, the object of the want is a state of emotion, generally referring to the state of love. However, coupling a want with an emotion is a dichotomy and is counterintuitive! Normally, one wouldn’t expect love to be the result of the act of wanting it. When applied to the heart, the source of all emotions, then the dichotomy becomes a tautology, because the heart is both the source of love and wants, so whatever IT wants, IT has.

Anonymous said...

I believe that this saying comes from a quote by Blaise Pascal....."The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing."
It so TRUE.

Anonymous said...

beautiful. the heart does want what it wants, do not try to make any sense of it

Anonymous said...

The Duchess of Windsor was at least one of the people who said that.

Unknown said...

Also Woody Allen said it in defense of why he fell in love with Soon Yi (his stepdaughter).

www.princessnessytalks.blogspot.com said...

What a lovely (albeit heart wrenching) post. I feel and acknowledge your pain.

I hope you can love again and that someone will love you just as much, if not more.

Love and light

Princess Nessy

Anonymous said...

Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia says the heart wants what it wants; maybe he was quoting someone else...

Loving someone is never a waste of time even if they do not love back--loving changes the lover even if it seems to fall unnoticed on the lovee.

Ana d'Almeida said...

Nice post! It reminds me of Edna St. Vincent Millay's lines:
'The heart asks more
than life can give
When this is learnt
All is learnt.'

Unknown said...

The heart wants what the heart wants. And it won't be denied.

Anonymous said...

How beautiful, how poetic, how sad!

Truly touched me!

ashley said...

i cried its true i feel exactly yhe same as your whole blogg said but in the female perspective it hurts to think that i let the one thing that ment so much to me go adn its just sucks when you cant move on stupid heart why cant it just let go...or maybe i really just dont want to let go and im just still holding to that one glimps of hope that slight chance that there are second chances and that for somereason i deserve one? well who knows but yeah really touching

Twenty Four At Heart said...

Beautiful post Jack. Between the story on 24 today, and now reading this ... I just feel sad. Life is so complicated sometimes.

Anonymous said...

Very beautiful.
As a side note, 'the heart wants what the heart wants' is a woody allen quote.
Your post gave me shivers, if you have enough truth and beauty to articulate emotions in such a capacity, then you I have complete faith that you will be able to find, one day, another heart to want and another sole desire. Love is never easy, any maybe that is more cliche than anything you want to hear, but its true. It's never logical to love, but it can still make sense in ways that you can never really explain.

Anonymous said...

Beautifully written. The heart does want what it wants. Period.

Anonymous said...

I love LOVE!!!

Unknown said...

i dont knoe where i heard this but i think its much older than woody but i heard its an oscar wilde quote and im sorry but being quite effeminate myself this quote doesnt really sound like a heterosexual mans quote think of oscar in his time explaining to another man why he loves men
and yes i feel your words i loved a girl to a similar extent left a nice dent in my heart but its ok she left me with the fact that she will always feel some love for me while my senses long to remember her smell her heart remembers

mine ;] thanks for the read
btw its from king of the hill bills cousin says that , still sounds better to me than it being a woody allan quote

Anonymous said...

So much beautiful truth in every comment here and I hope you all find love because you deserve it, we all do. I think I'm in love, I've fallen so hard...it hurts but I also love the feeling. Can't explain it but I know I'd rather hurt no other way. As the saying goes: "I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all".

Anonymous Witch said...

I am relinking to this on my blog.

I use that phrase also. It's the only explanation I have for still being horribly in love with my husband even though we are separated and he continues to make stupid choices.

Kick-ass post. It wrenches the heart. Hugs.

SheLetMeDown said...

amazing.. i thought i was the only one who felt like this. glad to know Im not singled out by the Gods. haha

Anonymous said...

i pray you find love one day, dear person. :)

Anonymous said...

Your words here so reflect mine. I wish my heart didn't want what it wants, as then it would be so less complicated. I know I will lose in this situation, yet it still seems worth the risk. To go years thinking of the one person I took for granted, thinking he would always be there "when I am ready". And now, I live in regret, married to another who has never held my heart. Not fair to any of us.

Anonymous said...

I wish my heart would want what I want it to instead of what is clearly not good for me. But what fun and adventure would I have if that were the case? Live and learn, laugh and love. You only get one life to live, so live it with no regrets, balls out:)

Anonymous said...

There's an episode of The X-Files (about a teenage boy who was part insect) that ended with a similarly worded phrase. But if you combine that phrase with previous poster's "live with no regret, balls out", I think I'll see a clearer path for myself ... The first thing I can't do anything about, the second, I most certainly can. Thanks all, for helping me reach some clarity in my current life and situation!

Anonymous said...

“The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants” means love is driven from the heart, not logic. The “heart” refers to the source of feelings and emotions, such as love. But the “heart” is also the symbolic source of good, perseverance, courage, determination. “Wants” comes from the determination quality emanating from the “heart”. In this case, the object of the want is a state of emotion, generally referring to the state of love. However, coupling a want with an emotion is a dichotomy and is counterintuitive! Normally, one wouldn’t expect love to be the result of the act of wanting it. When applied to the heart, the source of all emotions, then the dichotomy becomes a tautology, because the heart is both the source of love and wants, so whatever IT wants, IT has.





I like this description, that IS the logical definitoin of this!

JORDAN said...

I believe woody Allen said that quote trying to explain affair to Mai farrow with their adopted daughter....freak

Lalouxox said...

i LOVE your style of writting

Lalouxox said...

i LOVE your style of writing

Anonymous said...

Very well written, the Line itself is a dialogue in the beautiful romantic flick, "A walk in the clouds" starring keanu reeves and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, and it matches perfectly the emotions set in motion by your article here. Thank you for sharing.

JC said...

I once loved a girl more than anything in the world. I gave her everything from my heart and soul and what I could physically, emotionally, and mentally. Alas, she did not return my love and left me out to dry. I don't remember how many nights I cried, how much pain I felt throughout. I guess the heart wants the heart wants. I remember all the details, her voice, her touch, all down to the very last detail...it seems like it was yesterday (although in reality a long time ago). I moved on eventually, but whenever I see posts like this I have flashbacks so vivid it feels uncanny.

Anonymous said...

Get her back. Nothing is impossible unless you make it so.

Unknown said...

Your heart and your mind will never want the same. i like the way you write and try to explain us something unexplainable

Grackene said...

“The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care” ― Emily Dickinson

Unknown said...

/\ superb /\

Manual said...

A poem I left to a woman after she rejected me in a text message,..she never responded. She crushed me.
The heart does know and I wish I could stop crying.

I dreamt as I rested by the murmuring sea;
The boundless waves, powerfully sad, ceaselessly beckoning me,
‘We see you, we feel you, we know you,..
forever seeking the peace and love of shore.’
I awoke, my heart trembling,
It said, ‘it’s time to go fore.’
I dreamt once I stepped into the shallow sea and whispered,...
‘You flow warm and gently around me....’
...Oh great sea.

Not Quite Abandoned

I didn't think it had been as many months away from here as it has clearly been. I was certain I had updated this place in December and ...