---> Got this from The Oatmeal, who redirected me to The Fitness Pal.
It's quite amusing that the heart symbolizes love. <3
Sexual. For one, the human heart isn't even shaped like these, as it resembles more of the cow's. "The seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as a herbal contraceptive, has been suggested as the source of the heart symbol." [Wiki] The heart shape is also considered to depict female features such as the buttocks, mons pubis and the vulva which vaguely gives us the connection of love and sex. As for that matter, it remains a controversy and upon reading, I kind of feel awkward to draw another heart to show my love.
Rationalizing emotions. As for the color 'red', it only resembles blood - the lifeline and as what we all know, metaphorically describes 'passion'. Aristotle considered the heart as the seat of thought, reason or emotion. In great contradiction with what Galen, the Roman physician, believed. Galen identified the heart as the seat of emotions and the brain as the seat of reason. He was the first one to isolate emotions from reason, pointing out the big difference between the brain and the heart - the logic and the illogical. [Yet in Psychology, the brain has also its doings in emotions - the chemicals, the neurons (I could not explain it further) but as I remember it has.]
I <3 YOU.
Therefore, the heart should not solely be blamed nor thanked for 'love'. "I love you" means there are reasons which my brain have why I do, yet my emotions makes me blind so I could not explain why. "I love you" means your emotions are making you stupid since no one could explain emotions, nor stop it from making you feel.
Divinity. The Stoics, who by the way were the first ones to consider emotions as a source of errors in judgments or as I may call them 'the first positivists', taught the heart as the seat of the soul. Though they were scientists, they were not atheists, which intrigues me. In our time, it could be said that there is rationality in what they speak of. They didn't have the knowledge of the human anatomy, maybe that's why the Stoics left the explanation to the 'soul', the divine abstractness (because they couldn't explain the phenomena yet). Since then, the heart has been considered a mythical, divine figure up until now where the Catholics still use the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But in our time, we could already explain it! As I picked up from my fifth grade science class, the heart pumps our blood, the blood is the lifeline. It's the central organ of the body with the function of keeping us alive. It's our switch. With the decease of the heart, so does our life ends. When that happens it should not be colored red, it should be purple!
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