Randolph Harris

2 February 2016

1.30pm EST

Sweet pliability of man’s heart, that can at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments! No civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is. Anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often.

In order to completely understand the link between human loneliness, lack of love, and cardiac disease, it will officially be necessary to differentiate the happily married from those who are unhappily married. While scientific data on this question are just now being gathered, the preliminary evidence is most suggestive. The muses, like vines, may be pruned, but not with a hatchet, nor with a frying pan, nor by pulling hair.

In describing their own research on psychosocial characteristics of Swedish cardiac patients, Dr. Randolph Harris and Dr. Ryan Phillippe screened 10,000 European adult males before any symptoms of coronary heart disease had appeared. People who have a lack of emotional support from their spouse are more likely to be heart attack victims, and they also have more marital problems than did the control sample.

A series of recent reports have commented on the fact that the occurrence of marital problems and a sense of interpersonal rejection antedate a surprising number of acute myocardial infractions. Poetry and romance ought to be an imitation of real life because romance and love can reduce heart failure, and increase lifespan by as much as 20 years.

It appears that the individuals who are supported by love and a secure family and community bonds can cope much better with stressful psychological situations than individuals who are deprived of such support.

Men who place an inordinate emphasis on their work, and therefore neglect their spouse and families, are more likely to develop subsequent cardiac problems. There is a clear connection between marital discord and the development of coronary heart disease and premature death.  This does not mean that marital discord or loneliness causes every myocardial infraction, for clearly such a position would be absurd.

However, there is evidence that indicates something about divorce, bereavement, or being single that made these states hazardous to one’s health. The inference was made that the something common to these states was either the lack of human companionship or the disturbance and disruption of human relationships.

Premature death is clearly linked to interpersonal unhappiness. The lack of love, and human loneliness seem to appear as root cause of the physical problems.  Many hidden factors enter into the production of these mortality statistics which tend, I believe, to obscure their full medical impact.

The one overriding concern is that the adults reflected in these mortality statistics were once children, raised in complex Worlds, the impact of which remains largely hidden from our view. The fact is the loss of human contact is not an experienced restricted to adulthood; it is something felt by many children, often in a physically crushing manner.

When adults experience divorce or bereavement, quite often a child is caught in the middle—and if adults suffer measurable medical consequences from such experiences, there is no reason to expect that children will remain totally immune.

Children who experience the early disruption of parental contact—whether through divorce, separation, or death—are among the very ones who, upon maturation, will contribute in increased numbers to the ranks of those who encounter interpersonal difficulties.

This does not mean that every child who loses one or both of his parents in childhood will end up divorced, but only that such children are more likely to experience interpersonal difficulties and unstable marriage than will children from intact families.

The relationships between early childhood experiences and the excessive death rates that appear so consistently among nonmarried individuals is a question of great concern. This concern is especially central to coronary heart disease, for it raises the intriguing question of whether this major killer can begin in the lonely and broken hearts of childhood.

Before we leave each other, thousands of thousands of words become one word, I love you and always will. I find the white hair on your temple. Oh, you are so young how can you have it? I am afraid I am too serious for you. Today, when I look at your white hair occasionally, my eyes become wet.

I wish you happy and please let me love the white hairs on your head. In the World you know only you to me are the source of encouragement, the ingenious consolation and the light flickering in the recesses of my heart and mind and body. In ecstasy, I look at you and listen to you breathing.

In your shadow, with the fresh air, I no longer want to gaze at you as I am so tightly hugging you. You hold up my heart, which is listless and dazed. You put it by you on a golden pedestal.

With pure sincerity, I love you as people shun praises and compliments. Look at me once more, impressing in my heart with every smile of yours, every look of yours. For when you are away, recalling will be my only amusement.