CRIMES OF THE HEART

When you go around hurting people, with intent or not, you’re ‘killing’ them. It’s an abominable crime breaking hearts -- A crime and you a ‘killer’.

Harsh, huh? Yeah, that was my reaction when I first heard that from Marcia. We were in our usual meeting place and having our first group lunch for the year.

“Aww, c’mon! We haven’t gone a distance yet from the holiday stupor of revelry and here you are talking about crimes and killers. Ugh!” protested Cindy, a long lost friend now found. She was gone for several years blazing a trail in advertising and was successful at it in San Francisco. Now she’s back to try the domestic setting for a change.

Anyway, I was getting busy with my scrumptious gorgeous dish of pasta – seafood pasta in rich mozzarella cheese and tomatoes – when I felt a nudge to my side. You know, I was really meaning to ignore serious talk in this meeting and hell-bent in not tolerating any interference to a blissful moment with my pasta… not even by a great group of buddies as they. But the nudging was persistent.

‘What in pasta’s name are you doing?” I turned to my right from where the nudging came. Maria with big doe-like eyes drew closer and whispered “Do something; she’ll ruin our lunch. We’re celebrating??!” You know, when a pair of huge brown eyes menacingly stare you down like that… you’ll do anything to get rid of it…Or risk losing your sleep to horrifying nightmares in bed.

Okay, I pushed my plate away, just a bit not too far anyways, and turned towards the conversation. “Oh Marcia” I butted in with nary batting an eyelash… “Have you broken any hearts?” I could hear Maria groan beside me. Yup, she was in for some torture now. Yeah, don’t anyone dare to mess up with me and my pasta! Kidding, of course. :-)

But here’s what Marcie had to say.

“Don’t we all? You’ll be surprised how often we do it – to people around us, to people we say we care so much about. ‘Want to see a list? Let’s get down to brass tacks and quit the frills. See if these are familiar to you.

- Remember that time you hastily turned over the broken toy to the maid to fix – even when your 3-year old kid ran to you to fix it? Did you miss to see the disappointment in your little angel’s eyes? So what if you might miss your bus?!! He wants you – needs you.

- You come in through the door to a well-set table, your favorite stuffed chicken laid out in full dressing. You look at your watch – 1:00 am in the morning! You have worked through the night on your Anniversary! Ever wonder how your trusting loving wife must feel about that?

- You fly into your home, unload your things in your room, and rush out again to your friends waiting in the car. You simply breezed through the living room where your mother was waiting for you with furrowed wrinkled brows visibly upset. Ignored by you. You think that was nothing to her?

- At the office, papers are a mountain-high atop your desk, the phone’s ringing intermittently, and your high-strung boss is hollering for your reports. Here comes your girlfriend in the next cubicle gushing with delight wanting to tell you bout her cute new date for Friday’s office party. You curtly say to her “ Let’s talk later; am busy!” Hey, what are a few minutes to spare for a friend? It could mean the whole world to her, you know.

- An old dirty-looking man sits on the pavement apparently exhausted and hanging on to a big bundle of possessions which apparently seems to take up almost a huge slice of the pavement. Here you come loaded with parcels of Christmas shopping hurrying to get home. Then you bumped on the old man’s bag thereby throwing your things to the ground. Angered by this you turn to the man and scold him for crowding the sidewalk with his person and things. Didn’t it occur to you that he was simply trying to catch his breath, resting a bit, and would be moving on after? Where’s your heart in this?

You know poor man or rich man – all hearts can break for even the slightest insensitive cause or reason. But no reason is big or small enough to warrant a cold and heartless hurting word from you. Oh sure you will say that ‘hurting’ can’t be avoided because that’s how the world is, people and relationships what they are, life cruel and harsh. Of course I know that. But still that’s no excuse for committing crimes of the heart. Why break hearts when instead you can be the ‘healer’ of wounded hearts? Want to try that for size?”

There you go – Marcia at her best. And Maria (?) ---She left after a bit saying that her daughter’s new dress needed a bit of trimming --- but with a fresh twinkle in her lovely brown eyes. Pushing a fresh plate of scrumptious pasta, bussed me on the cheek saying “You’re a sweet devil you!”


posted on Saturday, January 06, 2007 2:10 PM