As I was sitting perfectly still during my Calculus class, I noticed something that I don't normally detect. I saw that my desk was vibrating. In a regular interval and without a sign of wavering, the desk seemed to shake every second. I realized that I was making my desk shake even though I was sitting still.
My heart was shaking the desk. To be specific: the closure of my aortic and pulmonary valves at the end of my ventricular systole made a strong enough beat to shake my desk.
It was one of those desks that is connected to your seat so even though I wasn't touching the desktop, my heart beat was shaking the support that held the desktop and made it shake.
It wasn't like I had just finished a morning run. I hadn't finished exercising. I was just sitting and thinking about optimization and Calculus related problems. My heart was beating at a resting heart rate.
And that is what I found to be so amazing. I knew the heart is a strong muscle but I didn't know how strong it was at it resting pulse.
The average heart beats 72 times per minute. It takes almost a minute to circulate a red blood cell through out the entire body. Everyday the heart creates enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles. The human heart provides enough energy in an hour to lift a one-ton, medium-size car one yard off the ground.
This extremely powerful muscle is responsible for keeping us alive. If one loses more than 3 and a half pints of blood they have a very slim chance of surviving and, according to Dexter, if a major artery is severed, one can bleed out in minutes.
It isn't surprising that we associate the heart with love and emotion because the heart is needed to keep us alive which is just what love and emotion does. It keeps us living.
I think we need to take a moment to stop and think about how hard our hearts are working.
ok... moment over...
back to studying and paper writing.
"Wherever you go, go with all your heart."
-Confucius
-Confucius
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