The heart of a young sweet pea bud is a mirror of the human heart.
I’ve grown masses of fragrant sweet peas in our vegetable garden over many years, observing their annual cycles of birth, life, death and rebirth. I leave them to find their own way, letting them self-seed where they find the soil best supports them flourishing through the next spring and summer. They pop up all over the place in a profusion of soft pink, mauve and white blooms through to deep velvety purple, burgundy and red, infused with a glorious perfume that fills the air with joy in the warmer months.
This young red sweet pea bud caught my attention because it looked just like the human heart, complete with blood vessels snaking along just under the surface. Anyone who’s grown fragrant sweet peas, Lathyrus odorata, knows the silky soft dulcet scent that filters through the garden and touches even the hardest heart. The heart is an amazing organ: It pumps the life blood around our bodies so we can greet a new day and is the source of our feelings and emotions, whether they make us soar high on the wing of a bird or plunge us deep into a dark abyss. And, whether we believe it or not, it’s our emotions that drive the decisions we make that fundamentally affect the quality of our lives.
The tender sweet pea bud with its heart swelling as it grows and develops is a beautiful metaphor for the emotional flowering of a young child in those fragile early years when they are learning about themselves, their place in the family and the responses their emotions generate in those around them. The sweet pea plant cleverly protects the young heart by covering the emerging bud with yellow-green sepals studded with hairs to prevent insect predators accessing the tender young petals and damaging them. The hairs also trap a layer of air around the bud to help insulate it and maintain temperature and moisture levels to ensure optimal conditions for its unfolding into a beautiful flower.
Unfortunately, we don’t always afford the same protection for the hearts of our young children when they are learning who they need to be in their families to know they are loved, feel they belong and are good enough so they can keep at bay the ever-present terror of being abandoned. The old adage’s ‘Follow your heart’s desire’ and ‘Do what makes your heart sing’ reveal the archetypal guide to living a life with a balanced heart, joy and fulfilment by staying in touch with our feelings and emotions and heeding the heart’s call no matter how challenging it might seem. When a child exudes energy and enthusiasm that comes from its heart but is met with disapproval or withdrawal of love, it quickly learns to suppress this energy out of fear of being left alone in a cold and threatening world.
As we grow into adulthood, we take these wounds with us and build a wall of protection around our heart that fundamentally affects the way we respond to and communicate with those around us. The call of the heart becomes muffled behind the edifice we’ve built to keep it ‘safe’ from being hurt, and eventually we can even forget that we have a heart with deeply felt emotions because it’s such a long, long time since we’ve allowed ourselves to hear and feel it.
Someone once said that humans are the only species who can stop themselves flowering. Interrupting this delicate unfolding of our true selves ultimately results in great ‘heartache’. Often, it’s not until we get to this point where we sense something doesn’t feel right or we start to experience physical illness or we just simply wonder what the hell we’re doing with our lives, that we become aware of the seemingly impenetrable wall we have erected around our feelings.
However, the human heart is an amazing thing. It has our best interests at heart (no pun intended!), so it will continue to try to get our attention in whatever, usually unpleasant, way it can to remind us that we need to get back on track and ‘follow our heart’ to restore our sense of wellbeing and the feeling that we are living a life that is true to our self.
And it’s when we return to being centred in our heart that we feel a renewed vitality and zest for life so beautifully mirrored in the vibrant red flower bud of the sweet pea as it emerges into a world fresh with infinite new possibilities.