“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald
Since I grew up in a Catholic family, I’ve been blessed with incredible encounters with some beautiful souls. One of them was Mr. Sarubatore, an Italian priest who was serving for the church in my neighborhood during the early 90s. Because I was still a kid at that time, I barely remember him. According to my parents, he visited my parents’ house when we moved to the home, and gave us his blessing, wishing our happiness and prosperity.
And my dad keeps telling me what Mr. Sarubatore told him about life. One of them is how important it is to have a wallet of heart. A wallet in general contains money. And the more you use it, the less you have. Too often, we’re prone to let money drive our lives. Our choices for decisions, careers, and even how we spend our free time. Personally, I believe money shouldn’t be our ultimate goal, rather it should be a tool to achieve what we want with our lives. As far as I’ve seen so far, people end up being too busy making money and eventually forget what really matters to them. What you can buy with money doesn’t mean much. What really matters is to have something money can’t buy – something priceless. So, here comes the wallet of heart.
The wallet of heart is intangible but has its own spot in our heart. It could be a skill or some experience. It’s your call. What the wallet of heart differentiates itself from the actual wallet is the fact that the more you use it, the more you get. Imagine if you were able to speak French as your second language. The more you speak in French with native French speakers, the better you become. It could be anything. A skill to program software or skill to make pottery. The message behind Mr. Sarubatore’s words might be how meaningless our life could be if we blind ourselves with our thirst for money instead of pursuing what truly matters to us.
If you already have your own wallet of heart, that’s wonderful. If you haven’t yet, start listening to your own inner voice. If you keep ignoring it, you might end up being deaf to it. There are a lot of people who became deaf to their inner voice. Don’t be one of them. As long as your ideas don’t hurt others, be true to yourself and give yourself enough room to follow your intuition.
Life is never easy. Achieving your own wallet of heart takes some effort. But you have to remind yourself that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. No matter how small your first step could be, the important thing is that you take it. Everyone deserves a wallet of heart.
So, let us begin…
Here are some shots I photographed and edited in 2011.
