Your Heart Is Located On The Inside Of Your Body

When I was twenty-one, I spent a spring in a small mountain town in northern India, where I met Yusuf, a poor man raising four shoeless children alone, yet also a brilliant Urdu poet. Yusuf patiently read Ghalib's poetry with me and revealed its secrets of metaphor and meter. Yet he also taught me something equally important: countless geniuses walk among us, unseen, hidden by the inequalities of this world.

It’s easy to dwell on the unfairness of Yusuf’s life, but he never did. He carried a quiet coherence that came from neither social recognition nor religious faith. He had a practice: he let lines of poetry resonate in his body until his whole being came into alignment. The poems he loved spoke of the heart and why it's the most important thing in life. But for Yusuf, the heart wasn’t an idea. You could feel his radiating as he recited each verse.

Many people say they want to “follow their heart,” but what they usually mean is they want a romance to work out or a career to win admiration. But your heart is inside your body for a reason. Whether or not others mirror your hopes, you are the one who has to live with yourself. And if your heart closes through self-judgment or self-pity, no outside heart can save you from that pain.

We talk a lot these days about the importance of community. And we DO need each other. But what we often miss is that, if you place your heart outside yourself by waiting for a partner, friend group, or perfect society to complete you, you’ll never understand what you’re seeking in the first place. Romance, career, praise, gain, and recognition all fade, and what they stir in you can be understood only by turning inward and feeling things without reference to external plans or achievements.

Behind your sternum, your heart is trying to speak to itself. You can help it by simply listening — really listening, perhaps for the first time.