What starts the human heart beating? How do we explain heart muscle automaticity? We know what it is - but how it starts is the pivotal question. Researchers tell us that the human heartbeat can be detected anywhere from 16 days to 35 days after conception. What causes the heart to start beating? No one knows. It is not understood, period.
Was it the “Divine Spark?” The dictionary defines “divine” as “of or from God.”
Is that what Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel’s depiction of God’s finger touching Adam’s represents? It is God that sparks the heart to beat. This singular action is required for life to begin and develop. From this spark we grow like fire. Our growth after this moment is a product of both genetics and environment. God also provided humans with free will. How we exercise that will largely determines our individual and group outcomes.
It takes fuel to sustain growth. Where does it come from? Initially it is provided by others. We can’t do for ourselves so as babies so we have little control over our physical or character development. As we grow older the process of developing our minds, bodies and character becomes our responsibility through the learning process.
Rarely do we learn from our successes as they tend to make us feel satisfied and feeling good about ourselves. While in self-reflection we often learn more from our losses. Instead of win or lose, we can win or learn. Adversity and competition do more to develop us than what is given to us. This was true in the late eighteenth century and is true today.
Our founders provided a unique from of government called Federalism. We are a republic. We are self-governed. We are “endowed by our Creator with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (note to progressive presentist historians… pursuit isn’t a code word for guaranteed.) Government in the United States was instituted “by the people and for the people.” Federal power was and is meant to be limited. That is the expressed written text in the Tenth Amendment to The Constitution of the United States of America. Our Federal representatives must remember this and must live by it.
1776 sparked a revolution resulting in a new form of government in 1787. We’ve done a lot of losing over the last twenty-five years. We must have the courage and the self-reflection to learn from our mistakes, not hide them. Correcting the record means acknowledging what our government has done wrong. If someone living has been harmed, amends should be made. People in context means individuals, not groups of people. And this means living individuals with a heart beat.