I don’t understand the heart, but I know that mine is broken.

As an organ, the human heart delivers the lifeblood of our living system, a function that is the very definition of our aliveness. In diagnostic terms, my heart is deficient in a few ways. There’s a genetic predisposition on my mom’s side in which the valves don’t fully close with each beat, so blood backwashes in eddies instead of moving forward in streamlines. On my dad’s side there’s this tendency to make extra globs of trash that deposit within the tunnels of the arterial network and restrict flow. We keep our eye on these things. I lie in fascination as a technician holds a gel-covered device to my chest and points out the slosh of blue and red on a screen indicating the heart’s inward and outward exchange. The doctor says I’m fine for now, but here’s a pill because, after all, we can never be too sure. All hearts fail us eventually.

It’s easy for the scientist in me to reduce it to simple mechanics. Humans are pumps and wires, pulleys and levers, ultimately. We say we are “hard wired,” something “clicks,” we make a “connection” and the “lightbulb” turns on. These depict our inner workings, but they also are tied to sterile technological models. They fall short of capturing complexities of who we are as organisms, animals and humans. Come to a class of mine and I might reduce it all to sparks of electrical signals and forces between charged molecules. Complex, yes, but ultimately not all that complicated, and certainly not who we are.

Deep within, we are individual systems of whirring cells and churning juices, a whole rather than the sum of parts. We carry on our skeletal structures an extraordinary cellular network that constructs memory of our first love, cravings for doughnuts and fondness for puppies. Through these we are all the same, equal, in our value and our potential; and we are each different, in heart, mind and in the experiences that shape us during our lifetimes and via generations preceding us.

A few years ago I went through a series of tests to see if some symptoms were heart attacks in the making or something else. Trouble breathing, lightheadedness and chest pain felt like imminent death. Or, it turns out, it could be a natural response to a build-up of anxiety, a “panic attack.” My doctor let me know I was “fine,” at least in terms of immediate heart health. When these happen to me now — and I think it’s important to publicly pronounce they still do — I’ll go on a run. It either makes me feel better or it could prompt cardiac arrest. So far, so good.

While my mechanical pump works, it’s my metaphorical heart, the more crucial human one, that hurts. We live in a place and time where we single folks out in fear of otherness. Or, we fear that we ourselves won’t get what we deserve if we extend any helping hand. There are repercussions. My son can’t legally enter a public restroom in Utah that matches where you’d naturally expect him based on his presentation and our stereotypes. A state school board member calls out a child on social media and publicly questions their identity and worth. Educators regularly receive messages undermining their efforts. We stir fear and lead with anger. We weaponize our public discourse, making enemies of one another as we sow distrust.

It’s hard for me to describe my condition, but “heartbreak” probably relays all you need to know. Losing your pet, waving goodbye to your child, or simply breaking down and weeping partway through the second verse of that song — these we’ve shared, individually experienced but collectively understood. Because, dear reader, we all have that heart, not only the pumping, pulsing collection of fibers that will thump only about 2 billion times over the course of your life, but the “heart” that is the essence of us. I can’t begin to explain exactly where that heart is or how it works, but I know it’s there. For all our differences, we have this indescribable commonality. Perhaps one day we’ll learn to use it.

Adam Johnston is a professor of physics and director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at Weber State University, where he helps prepare future teachers and supports educators throughout Utah.

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