Understanding 'Happens to the heart' by Leonard Cohen

I began reading 'The Flame' by Leonard Cohen which is a compilation of his life's works from poems to portraits. Before jumping to any forms of analysis done by others (which I know I once did), I took to committing to understanding his first poem 'Happens to the heart' on my own.

As adults, we need an income. But for most of us, this is not 'art', an expression of ourselves. For most, it's the complete opposite, an expression of a conditioned self to society and its norms. I began to question here, if we take on work for an income to use for whatever purpose, is that not an expression of ourself? Even if we may blame capitalism and feel we are entrapped in this system, it becomes a part of us which we cannot deny. In our minds and in our hearts, we may blame the system, we may blame the superiors in the hierarchy, we may blame someone but at the end of the day, we are partaking it. Even if we feel we must.

The greatest aporia is that we understand it is absolutely depressing. From young adults saying "I want to find my passions" to shallow job advertisements "excitedly" or rather mechanically bleating "each day is never the same", we understand that each day in reality, is quite the same. We fundamentally are not doing what we truly love. I respect those who say that they do. Perhaps these are the rare and truly disciplined ones who have managed to love the process and hard work. Who have truly loved the grind for the fruits of delayed gratification bear rewards which cannot be bought with money. But are they happy? Or is it decades of self-conditioning, would their childhood self be happy? My cat chases flies and sleeps half the day, he seems to enjoy life! Is ignorance bliss or is knowledge power?

"Jesus" and "Marx", quite the antithesis by way of representation. We meet to build trust and faith, we read to gain knowledge and empower ourselves. We often meet to go outward and read to go inward. We are forever searching, forever learning and unlearning, a balance of Archimedes' scales going up and down, up and down. We fail our passions because we failed to know whether it was passion from the heart or passion from conditioning. Our eyes, mind and heart are not clear and obscured with the opaque veil of life. We sweep everyone around us, especially those who venture close with us. Our influence through words, auras, actions and every obscure bit of energy shapes others too. Too often is it ugly and damaging to others, but most importantly to our own self. We confuse others and most significantly, we confuse ourselves. So we rely on structure, we tell ourselves we need good habits and do repetitive things over long periods of time to achieve mastery.

Those who venture towards spiritual enlightenment, self-development and anything towards that seemingly bright but thin path would understand, reflection is not the clear mirror of our faces we see when we look into the still water. Rather, reflection is not really reflection. It's what our mind tells us. The mirror reflects our minds more than what we see with our bare eyes. And our minds are all over the place. The frightening fact is, we tell ourselves we know for sure what we see but who are we to fully ascertain anything?

In a world of confusion, we take to familiar and simple things. We volunteer, we partake in what society's version of majority morality tells us to do. Was it religion before and mindset now? We dress well, maybe not too well as we may know that the whitest of shirts stains the strongest. We smile to the police (so we try) and we walk quickly past the snarling homeless. Is that right? I spoke before about how not many of us want to really know how many animals are abused by the second, not many of us want to know the details of people who have been victims of atrocities. "So I never had to witness what happens to the heart," Cohen whispers firmly. Hindsight is terrifying because what seemed like fire at first was actually freezing ice. How did we not see that? Or maybe we knew? We acted and didn't even know we were acting. We didn't even like where we were, who we were with. But at times we loved it more than anything. Life is so ambiguous and confusing but that's what the mind is. Maybe those who tell us to discipline ourselves are right. Maybe it's the only way...

Perhaps not. The soul is treated like "ahh Newtown," and the mind is seen as ravaging, lightning fast sharks in the deep, dark ocean. What a comparison. The soul is tiny and the mind is terrifying. We try to free our minds and shine the light on our souls. We somewhat know what a soul is as we age. Yet the light we use to shine on it pales. Windows we open to brighten our houses just let the wind in with no sunshine, just dust.

Man, Cohen seems bleak and nihilistic. "The art of justice bending", the justice system is so frail in the sense that no amounts of prevention without causing tyranny and dictatorship, will stop crime. There will inevitably always be some form of crime happening. Those who try to stand up for their own souls are booted from the system. How can you hold a job when your heart is not there. Without conditioning yourself to fit into this 'grand' puzzle, you will be cast aside like the joker in a card deck. We sit besides the homeless when we question the system. We become kinder to our community. We can feel some sort of understanding towards those who have been left behind. It isn't easy to cling onto a bullet train from the outside without a ticket. Swimming isn't easy if you are in the middle of the ocean and never swam in a shallow, warm pool. Swimming isn't as easy as blinking even if you trained for years and you are paddling in the shallow ends of a Sydney beach on a nice summer day. It's just autonomous.

The ending of 'Happens to the heart'. We all have 'fight' within us. Some of us punch, some of us grapple, some of us kick, some of us throw words, some of us conjure the mind. And whether we like it or not, we are familiar with the weapons our parents used. A gun, a shoe, a belt, a fist? Rights, responsibilities and social constructs are not what we fight for. We fight to live. And if our parents cannot in their lives, or we cannot in our lives, who is next? The kings and queens of the future lie in the young.

And I come out of my zone, what exactly happened in June 24, 2016 for Cohen?