HEART. Synonyms include core, mind, soul, spirit, compassion.

HEART. Defined in part as a muscular, blood-pumping organ; the center.

To keep your heart happy is to keep it healthy, strong and efficient. Sure, genetics play a role, but so does lifestyle. What you eat, how you exercise, how you relate to the world around you and how you love all affect the health and well-being of your heart.

Get the idea? This is one enormous, vast subject – researched, discussed, cheered, cajoled, and handled with care in more ways that one from poets to scientists, athletes to teachers, and Hallmark to the American Heart Association.

Physically, the heart as a muscle, needs to be exercised. It needs to be clean and lean and function with strength and precision to keep the body supplied with blood, oxygen, nutrients and life support.

Emotionally the heart that is open, generous and kind guides a life lived with enthusiasm and joy.

Blurring the line between the two, it is well-documented that stress, anger, depression and a host of negative thoughts and behaviors are as destructive to the heart as inappropriate ingestion of food, drink, drugs or inappropriate amounts of physical taxation.

But today, on the eve of another Valentine’s Day, consider this. Life is challenging, to be sure. You and I will experience difficulties, loss and great sadness. You and I will also experience inexpressible joys, pleasures and giggles. You and I are human.

As human beings, then, let us celebrate what is central to our being, what drives us, sustains us, encourages us and loves us in return. BLESS YOUR HEART.