In a whimsical valley, people acquired different emotions each day and for each day, they grow up. With all kinds of feelings found in the valley, people were fast growing up. However, there was one boy, despite living for many years, never grew up. They called him the boy who had no heart.
In school, he was always bullied and made fun of by his classmates but without a heart, the boy never did feel pain, regret or anger. On streets, he was mocked by his neighbours for always having an expressionless face but the boy often ignored them because he felt nothing towards them. At home, his parents were offended by his being stoic and would beg him persistently to be just like the others—growing up with feelings. But the boy often just locked himself in the room like he never heard anything at all. He knew what everyone thought of him and he knew that everywhere, at all times, people mocked him. Everybody believed that he was born without a heart and perhaps, would never grow one. And although he was treated differently by everyone else, the boy never wanted to be like them. It didn’t matter to him that he didn’t have a heart, that he was void of any feeling or that he might never grow up.
After all, none of them knew of the boy’s deed when he was much younger.
Early in his life, the boy realized that everyone seemed to be getting along when they acquire positive feelings like happiness and love among others. He thought that life wouldn’t be all that hard even if he did get some of the negative feelings the village had to offer as he grew up. He knew that as long as everyone else was there for him, he’d grow up living a satisfying life. But soon, the boy would see how his neighbours would fight because of the different feelings they had. The fights occurred almost normally as people grew up and the boy became afraid of hurting someone else or being hurt himself. As time passed by, the boy realized that positive feelings were not enough to keep people around him from fighting. Worse, those feelings could even cause harm and become destructive when left unguarded—just like what happened to his family.
Knowing all these pushed him to do the unthinkable. He resolved never to wear his heart again. He didn’t want to feel anything if feeling something would mean sacrificing others’ feelings. He was satisfied with being different—with being empty—because that would mean that he couldn’t hurt anyone, likewise, he wouldn’t get hurt.
As others continue to grow old, the boy, having felt nothing for a long time, wondered how his heart was doing. So, one day, the boy decided to open the chest and see what his heart had become. Carefully, as the lid was opened, the heart that glowed brightly before had lost its radiance. His heart was now rotting, wounded, and scarred. Confused, the boy wondered how his heart could have come to that when he was sure that feeling nothing would save it from all the ills of the valley. It seemed to him that it wasn’t enough to hide his heart and there was no escape for him other than his last resort.
The boy then took his heart carefully in his hands and wore it again. Suddenly, strange feelings rushed inside his body one after another and he was only able to distinguish the strongest feeling of all: fear. As the boy attempted to walk outside, his parents saw him and the latter were taken aback by what they saw: tears covered their son’s face. With trembling hands and knees, the boy walked around the neighbourhood. He shocked the people in the valley who thought that he had no heart. With each step, the boy grew taller and soon, the boy was no longer a boy but a man.
“I’m dying.” He said when he paused in the middle of the street. Hurriedly, his neighbours and family formed a crowd around him in disbelief. They prepared themselves to help out once the man who had no heart collapsed. In the midst of all this, they found the boy’s assertion strange as no one died in a relatively young age. People died in the valley because of old age.
“I don’t want to have this feeling.” The man with no heart said again as he tightened his grip on the knife he held when he walked out of the house. Just as he was about to end everything, his mother tugged on his shirt, giving him something. It was a piece of emotion he had dropped years ago, before he had surrendered his heart. His mother was returning it to him. At that moment, the man, who used to have no heart and feelings, traced a smile on his face.
On that day, while people thought that love was the answer to their despair, the man who used to have no heart thought otherwise.
He believed that hope was what kept him alive.