Little Bloomers or Upside-Down Hearts

When you begin seeing "hearts," she told me, "you are ready for a relationship"—then she added she had made that up. Years apart, a friend told me she’d been to a conference where she’d found heart-shaped stones near a river. I mused over her discovery. Then I had a phase in India where I saw stones that were heart-like. Exploring putting hearts on my bed pillow when I was ready for a relationship, I can confirm one appeared.

I face with resignation the thousands of insects that come with the first monsoon rain each year, crawling over the walls, or immobilized near a light. I delight in the "flying horses"—beautiful clouds of fluttering wings in the security lights beyond the darkened windows. There is one insect, however, that has captured my imagination, for it looks like a pair of little bloomers, or an upside-down heart. A thoughtful-appearing insect—it rests for hours (maybe several days) undisturbed, unless my hand comes close.

In my spiritual training, some people were described as upside down—most of the population—or right-side up. The difference depended on seeing the values of the world as worldly (material) or spiritual (finding God within.) People could own both values. Love is—down deep—the stuff we are made of. The little bloomers, or upside-down hearts, remind me to keep upright—keeping my thinking through my heart.

My realization is, "The heart symbolizes love on our surface and also at our deepest level."