All About You FRIDAY – When Hearts Connect

Hands holding a red heart on wooden background.

“We have a three-year old that is really challenging,” my friend who runs a preschool said. She described an incident where this boy pushed another student causing her to hit her head on the wall. “She got quite a goose-egg.” The parents of the girl were upset, but the parents of the young boy were mortified and exasperated. How could their son have done this? After everyone went home, his mother called my friend for some advice.

“There are three times when your heart connects with your child’s,” my friend said. “One is when you sit and read to them or tell them stories that infuse your moral beliefs. The second is when you sing with them. And the third is when you sit on the floor and play with them. That is when their hearts are most open to yours.”

Read. Sing. Play. Together.

Is it really that simple? I began thinking about my childhood and the times I felt happiest. This is a challenge because I was happy a lot. But I remember being tucked in bed and my mom telling me stories about her life before my eyes closed in slumber. I remember coming home from choir practice with my dad and belting out the Hallelujah Chorus at the top of our lungs. And the best was when we had “family night” and all got in our pajamas and played basketball in the living room with a nerf hoop taped at Filipino height to the wall. We were never a board game family and our days were pretty structured with school, homework and practicing music, but when we stopped to play my heart felt wide open.

Wide open to connection and receiving. Wide open to feeling. Wide open to learning.

Wide open only happens when one feels safe. It is the antithesis of the closed-off, protective posturing of fear.

I think of the weight of the world many of us carry. The burden of responsibility. The fear of the unknown future. We are bombarded with it all day long and our devices keep us stuck in the loop of fear. We act out in frustration that sometimes doesn’t even make sense to us. And then we self-soothe by burying ourselves deeper in our devices, scrolling for things that might bring us a quick laugh or superficial relief.

I think now of when I’m happiest. I love coming home to someone who genuinely wants to know about my day and what I’ve learned. Someone who won’t take “It was good” as an answer. Someone who loves me enough to probe and listen and tell me stories in return.

I love going to the music school every week to play with my band. The exhaustion of the day melts away when I pick up my guitar and join my friends in banging out some tunes. I’ve been at it for eight years now. In that time, I lost my mother and I remember dragging my broken heart to the recording studio where we sat in sadness together and then someone said, “There’s always music. Let’s play some music.” And my heart started to heal.

And if you know me, then you know the importance I put on playing. Even as adults. Especially as adults.

I think my friend is right. Only I don’t think her advice is just limited to children. The heart that we were born with is still the same today except maybe it has thicker walls.

Tell stories. Sing songs. Play. Open up your hearts and find some connection.

This world, and your world, will be a better place if we can manage to do those three things.

It’s been a long week. Don’t forget to celebrate.

Until next time…