The heart as an organ and as a destiny

to Agnese, with all the good she has been able to give to my existence

I was a father before I was a father, and like you, I suffered and tried to heal my wounds, not always succeeding, because there are pains that cannot be tamed and remain like invisible scars. Yet those very scars taught my heart that fragility is not a condemnation but a path, that vulnerability is not weakness but a form of knowledge, and that every time I thought I couldn't cope, I discovered that my strength lay not in being invulnerable but in accepting falling and getting up again.
I was a father before I was a father because I learned to care for what wasn't yet born, to protect dreams that didn't yet have a face, to cherish hopes that didn't yet have a name, and in this exercise of anticipated responsibility, I understood that love is never a possession but always a gift, that it isn't measured by the perfection of victories but by faithfulness to attempts, even when they fail, even when they leave wounds that never fully heal.
And so, along my journey, I discovered that being a father means, above all, bearing witness to a truth greater than myself, the truth that life is not meant to be held back but to be given away, that the heart is not meant to be protected from pain but to be pierced by it and transformed into a larger space, and that every wound, even the most incurable, is actually a seed that prepares a different, broader, brighter future.
This writing is dedicated to you!

The heart, which is not just a muscle but an embodied enigma, has chosen a radical and almost paradoxical path over the course of evolution: to forgo regeneration to preserve stability, to forgo the multiplication of its cells to minimize genetic errors, to forgo the possibility of complete healing to ensure the continuity of its beat. And in this renunciation it has found its strength, because almost no tumor dares attack it, yet every wound that strikes it remains like an indelible mark, like a memory that cannot be erased, like a sign that speaks of the fragility of what is simultaneously invulnerable and vulnerable. 

EDITORIAL | ABEL GROPIUS

Inside the chest, this mysterious organ houses a small army of neurons, about forty thousand, which do not think like the mind but communicate with it, modulating emotions, pain, and calm. This silent dialogue reveals its nature as a " second brain ," an autonomous center that can continue beating even outside the body, powered by its own internal electricity, as if it were born to demonstrate that life does not need external commands to exist, that life is a self-sustaining impulse, that life is a rhythm that cannot be interrupted.

Yet, when love breaks it, it truly breaks, because biology and metaphysics meet at a fracture that is not merely symbolic but real, and in that seemingly incurable pain, a passage opens, a wound that becomes a door, an abyss that becomes a threshold, a void that becomes a fertile space, and right there, where solitude seems unbearable, the possibility of listening to the most authentic voice within oneself arises, the one that is not fooled by illusions but prepares new, more conscious, freer, and greater choices.

Every tear that falls is not sterile but a seed, every suffering is not condemnation but initiation, every fall is not the end but training, and the heart that today seems broken is in truth a heart that is expanding, that is training to contain more love than it ever has before, that is preparing to recognize and welcome a more just, broader, brighter love.

Thus, love that wounds is not the end of the story but merely a page that prepares the next chapter, and that chapter will be written with a more confident pen, with a more farsighted gaze, with a strength born of having already weathered the storm, because the certainty of being alive is not measured by the absence of pain but by the ability to risk, to fall, to get up again, and to transform every wound into a path, every solitude into a fertile silence, every tear into a seed of rebirth.

The heart, a biological organ and existential symbol, teaches us that life is a choice between stability and regeneration, but also between expansion and closure. It is precisely in its dual nature—a beating muscle and a symbol of feeling—that the deepest truth is revealed: we don't live to avoid pain, we live to experience it and transform it, because only those who have experienced fracture can contain the vastness of the love to come.