Why does a heart signify love? Find out.

Remember drawing a heart around your and your crush’s initials in school? Or drawing a heart in icing on a cake or on a Valentine’s card? Our children start drawing hearts early on as well – they’re easy – and picture books are filled with hearts, whether it’s a scribble by a happy character or a bear’s eyes going all googly with hearts floating in the air to show his love of honey. But Why? Why do hearts mean love?

Let your mind wonder to the pyramids of Egypt, to the era of pharaohs and mummies (when they were being put in, not coming back to life and crawling out, though). The Egyptians believed that the heart was where our thoughts and emotions originated – not the ideograph of a heart, but the biological, real-deal, beating heart. Today scientists make the quite believable argument that it’s our brains that actually house these things – hence, Einstein’s brain being frozen in New York and not his heart, as would have been the case if Ramses II had been mayor of the Big Apple a few decades ago, instead of pharaoh a couple of centuries ago.

Strangely enough, the Egyptian view still influences us today. Just look at the phrase “the heart of the matter” – meaning the centre, the thing that keeps everything else alive. Our hearts lie at the centre of our bodies, pumping the blood that keeps us alive through our veins. The Egyptians saw the most vital of organs as the one that must be responsible for the most vital parts of being human beings – our thoughts and emotions.

At Soetlief, although we take the side of the scientists regarding our thoughts and emotions’ origins, we also understand that our emotions lie the centre of our self-awareness. And of all the others, love is the one that lies…well, at the heart of all emotions. Most other emotions, such as embarrassment and happiness, can be reasonably easily explained. Even more difficult emotions such as anger, thankfulness or joy can be explained when you take the time. But love? What is love? We know how it feels and how it affects us, but explaining it is impossible.

While my 3-year-old daughter may be saying “love you” to every cat she hugs, I really do dread the day that I will be asked to explain just what this “love you” really means.

When we feel love, whether it is our own love for others or knowing that others love us, it changes how we live and how we see the world. The Love Heart, the centre of our emotional being, the centre of “me”, is where it all begins.

The Soetlief journey helps your child to identify their Love Heart and understand their feelings, going directly to the centre of your child’s being, taking them to the heart of the matter…so to say.