Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Heartbeats in a Lifetime

There are very few things that I found more amazing and miraculous than my anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics classes in my undergrad in mechanical engineering at BYU. If you think about the human heart, it is the perfect pump in every regard. It's steady, consistent flow is constant and continual for the length of a person's life. There are moments here and there that may cause the heart to slow, race, or even skip a beat from time to time but it typically never stops beating. It is because of this that we continue to live life each and every day and also why each and every day is a miracle and a gift. There are a million ways why or how a heart could fail and life could end but we have hope that has grown from waking morning after morning that we will see another day even though we will never know when our lives may end.

Think about the miracle of life for a second. An average healthy human heart beats 72 times per minute and an average adult will live to be 80 years old. Accounting for minutes, hours, and days over an average lifetime, this means that an average human heart will beat 3,027,456,000 during a person's lifetime. Think on that for a minute. Time is as continual as that heartbeat and we have on average 3 billion of them.


The heart is more than a miracle muscle. It is where we attribute love, compassion, fear, and most of our feelings. Where do we find the courage to tell someone something deeply personal or impactful? Where do we hide the words we are too afraid to say aloud? Where do passions or sacrifice originate? Where are our desires born inside us? Where does the soul reside when it is not seen through our eyes? Is it pure? Is it strong? Is it broken? Sometimes I wonder if there is someone out there that their heart beats for me. There is so much I do not understand or am unable to explain but I can say this: Through the experiences I have had in my life, I have come to know that the heart is both a miracle and it is wonderful.

No comments:

Post a Comment