Paper hearts and the importance of tape
When I was in kindergarten our teacher did a little exercise to help us understand the concept of being nice. She came in with a paper heart. And explain that in the morning when she woke up, got dressed, and went to grab an Eggo for breakfast, but the box was empty. So she tore a little piece of her paper heart. Then driving to school someone had honked and cut her off in traffic. She tore another piece. And she continued the little list of grievances from other’s complaints, negative statements, and minor heartbreaks and there her paper heart was 3/4s heart and a small pile of torn red construction paper.
But she explained, as soon as the students started filtering in, one had given her a hug, another told her how pretty she was, a third was excited to learn and piece by piece she started taping her heart back together. And she explained that everyday little things happen that tear a piece of our heart, but kindness and love can put it back together. And there she showed us her repaired paper heart. It looked like a full heart, but even as a child I noticed imperfection in the tears and little cracks. She clarified when you are mean to people it makes rips in their hypothetical hearts and you have to be careful because even with all the repairing tape can only fix so much.
And to this day, the idea has always haunted me. Sometimes no matter how you try to mend our paper hearts we lose pieces, the cuts ruin the paper, and many times tape just doesn’t fit everything back together. As I child I didn’t quite understand the concept of how you would go about getting a fresh new paper heart. And now that I’m older I understand the concept of fear and baggage we carry as adults. The things that happen to us throughout our lives can tear our paper hearts and even the taping back together still leaves us with the visual blemish and the memory of what happened.
This month especially I have been struggling to keep the pile that remains of my paper heart together in one place. I keep hoping some miraculous event of large scale kindness and inspiration will give me the tape to piece it all together. Or maybe its quite possible that I am silently waiting, praying, and dreaming of the day when I find the one person who carries the red construction paper, so I can cut a new paper heart.
