No one can ever use his heart to listen or touch or feel or see or smell. It's just a lump of muscle pumping mechanically inside your ribs. It has no will and no ability to do anything but go on pumping until it gives up and withers away or is choked by some disease. Your spinal cord, on the other hand, feels. The central nervous system pours out from the spinal cord, and with it one feels pain. Pain is the most trustworthy sensation a human being can know because it teaches us what hurts. With the spinal cord, one can hear what will hurt, smell the sting of suffering, taste it, feel it, and see the world with new eyes. I learned a long time ago not to follow my heart, the hunk of meat flexing in the chest. I trust the tube locked up in a column of bone, the tube that shows me what pain is. Joshua S. Porter
About This Quote

I learned a long time ago not to follow my heart, the hunk of meat flexing in the chest. I trust the tube locked up in a column of bone, the tube that shows me what pain is. We all know how tough our hearts are – they beat day and night, pumping blood around our bodies. But we don’t know what they can do until we’ve suffered damage to them and watched as they limp on despite everything we do.

After my heart attack I knew just how tough my heart was. It didn’t matter that it was stopped by a rogue clot or that it had been beaten into submission. With some good medical care my heart has been able to come back and beat normally ever since.

I learned a long time ago not to follow my heart, the hunk of meat flexing in the chest. I trust the tube locked up in a column of bone, the tube that shows me what pain is. Feeling pain is true knowledge and my experience proves that if you let yourself feel pain you will learn your body's limits very quickly – you will learn what you can take and what you can’t.

You will learn how far you can push without losing control of your life again – you will learn how strong your body is and how weak it can be.

Source: The Spinal Cord Perception

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