The moment I woke today I said, “My heart is heavy,”
But I did not mean it.
Why do we say that?
The heart isn’t heavy, no matter how sad we may be.
A man’s heart weighs something like 10 or 11 ounces,
A woman’s is even less: 8 or 9.
If your heart is heavier than that,
It isn’t from sadness.
It has become enlarged from some medical condition and it may be treatable.

And even if you had a heavy heart,
Say five pounds or so,
It could sit in your lap with little difficulty,
Like a cat or a small dog.

A cow’s heart weighs about 5 pounds
And would not weigh me down much.
Even a horse’s heart is easily managed at 8 pounds.
I have had dogs in my lap bigger than a giraffe heart at 26 pounds.
An elephant heart is something like 60
But it would still fit in my lap.

It is not the heart that is heavy;
It is the world.
“The world is heavy,” is what we mean to say.
“I can no longer bear it in my lap.”
It is my heart’s job to weigh the world.
The weight of the world can crush a man’s heart to jelly
And his bones to powder.

That is what I meant to say this morning.
The world is heavy
And I am in danger of being crushed.

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