If you're going to write then choosing to write about a broken heart is a dangerous gambit. It's passé, it's over-done, done to death, dull, disinteresting - ditch it!
But it happens, right? We've all had our hearts broken haven't we?
People, in this post-pandemic era talk about social isolation and loneliness emerging as a result of fear of the outside world, fear of getting a terrible illness, mistrust of other humans who like rats become carriers of disease, panic of being in an arena where you have no control. It's not a million miles from the feelings attached to having your heart broken - the tendency to withdraw, isolate, leads to the same sense of loneliness. There's a powerful Ad campaign that was run in the UK in 2016 specifically targeting the elderly, the Loneliness Kills ad campaign was conceived and executed by Superdream, an ad agency based in Birmingham, United Kingdom, for Alone, an organization helping older people in need. It read, "Research shows that loneliness and isolation can be as harmful to someone's health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day." That's a shocking statement aimed at opening people's eyes back in 2016, the baton was picked up by Age UK and in Australia in 2019 they pronounced "Loneliness is a social cancer, every bit as alarming as cancer itself". When Covid19 arrived it became a tangible concern for everybody regardless of age or gender. Others became hyper-independent, hyper vigilant - refusing to rely on anyone but themselves, refusing to open their heart or be generous and giving in order to control the impact of their fellow humans on their own environment, well-being, and sense of self. Surely a negative action leading back to self-isolation and loneliness?
During the pandemic, people were stopped from leaving their homes, once the crisis eased off those habits formed from government-imposed 'isolation' continued for many. As we emerge from the crisis, people are ordering "Just Eat' rather than walking to a nearby restaurant, they're accessing youtube or Netflix or Amazon Prime rather than going to the theatre. We're becoming more like the people on the galactic cruise liner in the Disney/Pixar animated film WALL-E released in 2008, so used to pressing a button to get our needs met that our bodies become irrelevant, gradually unable to walk or dance. Okay. I'm not saying that when your heart is broken you become an obese slug (although that is a stage some broken-hearted people go through if Bridget Jones is to be believed) but there is no doubt that when you experience a huge let-down from someone you loved, or heavily invested in, either through loss and grief, or because someone actively left your life, or ghosted you, or simply could not return the love you felt for them, you have a physical response and often a mental response to accompany it. Something in you breaks... not literally or physically (although pain can definitely be a factor) but something so real in terms of your soul, your spirit - that you were crippled by it, unable to function. Your heart is an animate part of your body, philosophers and artists consider it to be the inherent centre of your being. The chemicals released through love or passion, the endorphins, the adrenalin sparking through your nervous system and cerebral cortex, cause your heart to beat faster, and this fact explains the link to symbolising love through the imagery of the heart; not just an intertwining of two souls in shared experience but also two hearts...beating as one.
Experiencing a broken heart is a process, from which, some people heal and some people don't, choosing instead to isolate. Not perhaps in quite such a dramatic fashion as Miss Havisham, the reclusive jilted bride in Charles Dicken's story "Great Expectations". But the real and manifest ways in which the mind asks the body to respond to a broken heart are as diverse and unpredictable as the mind itself. In 1966 Jimmy Ruffin asked, "What becomes of the broken-hearted? Who had love that's now departed? I know I've got to find, some kind of peace of mind - Maybe.."
In this new age of self-introspection, self-preservation and insular leisure activities such as 'gaming' and 'online shopping' and the arrival of AI - will the act of 'broken-heartedness" be softened by the removal of face-to-face contact by augmented reality and the invidious growth of computer-generated software? Will love and connection become a thing of the past, an outdated, unrecognised symptom of society from a bygone era? Will Jimmy Ruffin's sought after peace of mind become a dull sense of inertia, a numb fantasy expressed through a third-party tool such as an online game or artificial avatar?
I'll leave you with the words of another great musician -