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The Fontane Sisters’ 1955 #1 hit tune, “Hearts of Stone” was about as catchy as tunes got back then. Of course, the girls were singing about love, and how a heart armored against rejection will never break. Which is certainly true. But the hearts I’m referring to here are not just hardened toward love.
Stone cold hearts are developed over a lifetime. Those of us who have been around the block a few times have seen enough liars, cheats, con men, and BS artists of every stripe that we may become inured to the woes of others. I’ve been around that block enough times to have worn a groove into the sidewalk.
We are born with soft hearts, it’s the nature of youngsters. We like furry, feathered friends, nature, and anything as innocent as we are at that tender age. The hardening started a long, long time ago in my case, when friendly neighborhood bullies were older white kids who threatened us kids with their fists. For a dime. Then there were black kids who threatened with switchblades for fityy cent. Later yet, in Manhattan, came the panhandlers of all colors who hit on us with sad-sack stories about needing money to get across the River to their granny’s deathbed. There were poor unfortunates who “just needed a job” to get back on their feet. Then sad sack employees hanging on your neck like albatrosses. Car repairmen who couldn’t fix a glass of water. Contractors who demand up-front payment and never complete the job. Doctors who misdiagnose, make your life even more miserable and still demand full payment. Best friends and relatives who turn on you like coyotes in the dark. Business partners who do you in. Your telephone message recorder and your e-mail inbox is daily filled with missives of crooks, scam artists, cheaters, liars and every sort of bunko trickster from your own town all the way to the farthest reaches of Siberia and deepest Africa. I know each of you has your own list of heart-hardening episodes.
Is it any wonder we become cynical? How many politicians have we cheered, only to be terribly disappointed as they succeed to elected office only to make a mess of things with their feet of clay? How many presidents have we watched betray their promises and the very people who put them in office?
Should we feel guilty that we are skeptical of foreign nations who demand our aid today, after we have seen what so many corrupt leaders have done with our tax dollars? How many charities have used your hard-earned money to line the silk pockets of their over-fed leaders? How about people caught in disaster, those in government and those in our lands, who didn’t have enough sense to get out of the way of whatever was rushing toward them? I am out of sympathy for them all. My heart has become granite. I’m not proud of it. That’s just the way it is. Once hardened, even God has a difficult time softening a heart.
Going back three generations I am aware of, my family never asked for help from outside. Not for anything. Believe me, they could have used it! Like many of yours, my ancestors came to America from Europe. They came legally. There was no one here, no government “program” or department yet invented to give them a hand. They were simply processed through Ellis Island, deposited on the shore, and forced to fend for themselves at the turn of the 1900’s, when times were very tough for many in America.
My folks never received or asked for help during the Great Depression. To these generations, the very idea of welfare – indeed any kind of handout – was degrading. They had something called pride. Like many of you, I never had any kind of financial assistance to complete my schooling. It was school by day, work by night, and get through it somehow. Somehow I did.
These are just some of the more obvious experiences which turn our hearts to stone over the years. The net result is many of us are sick and tired of hearing all the whiners today. We cringe at whining millionaire entertainers who want our sympathy for how they screw up their lives. And they get it from soft-hearted devotees! We are outraged at politicians who screw up and offer pathetic excuses for one failure after another as they are defended to the end by soft-headed followers. We despise those who try to sue anybody and everybody when they themselves are at fault. Yet soft-hearted juries award them prizes. Does that driver in the car behind me expect my sympathy when he rear-ends my car, or one who runs down some innocent kid because she is busy “chatting” on her cell phone about something “really important”? Does that drunk driving his pickup on the wrong side of the road expect my sympathy when he wipes out an entire innocent family? I can’t give him something I don’t have. Cold? Welcome to America’s heartlessland.
But one tiny corner of my heart still beats soft and warm, and I reserve that little corner for the innocents of this world, most of whom are pets, my fine feathered friends, and children under the age of seven.
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