When I was in my late 30's, the doctor in the Rova told me that when I turn 40 I would have to start getting my heart checked with an EKG. That freaked me out. Like, I am already a candidate for a heart attack at 40? Thank G-d close to a decade has passed and Hashem in his infinite mercy has allowed my heart to beat flawlessly and consistently with no glitches. How can I thank Him? Or in the words of the Psalmist "מה אשיב לה' כל תגמולוהי עלי"?!!! At an average rate of 80 times a minute, the heart beats about 115,000 times in one day or 42 million times in a year. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 3 billion times -- pumping an amount of blood that equals about 1 million barrels. Is that NORMAL? And don't we TOTALLY take it for granted? Imagine how we would look if we fulfilled the teaching of Chazal to thank Hashem for every breath "על כל נשימה ונשימה תהלל י-ה"?! The heart is an AMAZING organ. People only notice it when it gets attacked. It is sort of like the referee who only gets attention when he makes a bad call [definition of "bad call" - a close call that is against my team. Have you ever seen a coach argue that in favor of the other team? Never in history!! How could it be that the ref ALWAYS errs AGAINST my team and when he rules in favor of my team he is ALWAYS correct? A פלא נורא], the mother who is noticed when dinner isn't ready, the teacher who gets special attention when she gives a poor grade, the bus driver who is only noticed when he is late.
Some mussar:
Look at simple EKG. They hook you up to the wires and measure how your heart is doing and what does it look like? If you are alive, it looks like this__---___---___---___---___---___---___. If instead it looks like this ________________________ what does it mean? Yep, you’re dead. You don’t want it to look like _____________ because that isn’t living. It’s the same with every challenge of life. The very pulse of life itself is up and down and up and down and up and down forever.
