PRESENCE

In 1992, an unconventional romance movie called The Crying Game was released and well received by critics and movie fans alike. In one scene in the movie, the girlfriend of a British soldier held hostage, Dil, is singing at a night club. After singing she sits at the bar and converses with the IRA soldier, Fergus, who held her boyfriend captive. In the middle of their conversation, a young tough confronts the girlfriend over money. When Fergus asks the worldly bartender who was asking for money, his reply was ‘someone she should run a mile from.’ Fergus is curious why she does not, and the bartender replies, ‘Who knows the secrets of the human heart?’
When the term ’human heart’ is used in this context, what exactly is the bartender referring to? In this context, the American Heritage Dictionary defines the heart as ‘The repository of one's deepest and sincerest feelings and beliefs.’ I find this definition somewhat nebulous. When I think of how people use the word heart, I think it terms of passions and emotions. Whereas we initially describe people in categories, as we get to know someone, we understand them a level deeper in terms of the passions and beliefs, we get to know their heart. What a person believes, and values most highly defines their heart, and those passions form who they are and determine the decisions they make in life. Hearts vary wildly. One person loves to eat; another will eat anything that can fill their stomach and thinks eating is a waste of time. Chinese people love to eat so much they take pictures of their food and post it on Facebook. Some people cannot get enough football and spend their whole week preparing and thinking about the big game, whereas others don’t follow football at all, and don’t even know the rules. One may have a passionate heart for God, others think God as a fiction to be ignored and written off. It is a bit of a mystery why some are passionate and others indifferent. Also, when I say passion, it can be positive or negative, love or hate. Some love football and will obsess over it, whereas some will hate football as a brutal violent, overly complex game full of obtuse rules that no one can follow.
I cannot explain why some develop a passion and others are indifferent. I think belief has something to do with it. The word belief according to American Heritage Dictionary is ‘Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something’. I like that definition, because in the heart we are convinced something is true and right. Once we are at the level of conviction we develop passion in our hearts. Note in many cases of the heart is based on beliefs or assumptions, and when these assumptions change, the passions change. A wife may be totally in love with her husband with the conviction he is a great and faithful guy. When he is caught cheating, that belief of a faithful husband is shattered and the passion changes; the heart changes. Love turns to hate or even worse, cold indifference.