The Desire To Escape Vulnerability: The Warlock's Hairy Heart

(Tortoise)
Bought it from a thrift shop in Penang

In the Tales Of Beedle The Bard by J.K Rowling, there's a story called 'The Warlock's Hairy Heart' which I think is the most gruesome yet the best fairytale I've ever read. You can click on the title to get the PDF version, or read the summary by yours truly here. To my friends and family, I'll be happy to lend you the book too.

Here it goes: (Crude version)

There was a warlock (Basically a very powerful wizard) who saw how his friends became stupid when they fell in love. He did not like being stupid, so he cut opened his heart and kept it under lock and key in the dungeon. He was very pleased and praised himself for not having any feelings. He pitied his friends who had children. When his parents died, he thought that was a blessing.

But one day, he overheard his servants questioning how he was unable to attract anyone and the warlock took this very personally as an insult. Thus, he decided to find and marry a perfect girl merely to satisfy his pride. She must be the most beautiful girl anyone has ever seen, gifted with magical talent and wealthy because he did not want to share his fortune.

Coincidentally, there was such a perfect girl passing by his land and so he courted her. Everyone thought the Warlock's cold heart had finally thawed. But he was just an asshole who cited love poems with no feelings at all and skilled at sweet talking. The perfect girl was really perfect, because she could see through his bullshit and demanded him to show her his heart. 

The warlock wanted to please her so he put back his heart which had grown hairy. Like a child who tasted sugar for the first time, he couldn't control himself because he had been deprived of feelings too long, so instead of falling in love with the beautiful girl standing infront of him, he cut opened her heart to take it as his own. But the hairy heart refused to go back to the cage and as the warlock never wanted to be controlled by his own heart, he used a dagger to cut it out and died.

I think it is worth mentioning that after he cut out the girl's heart, he 'licked and stroke' the bloody heart. Fucking disgusting. 

The story has been reviewed and analysed by Professor Dumbledore (HAHAHA) so well and I have no valuable insights to add. So this is just another post of me rambling on why I love this story. The best part about blogging is I don't need to think about who would care about such stuffs or worry about being left on read after sending an emotional essay. Blogging is me just being a flower, accepting that the right insects would come along; instead of uprooting myself to get under people's noses, proving I smell nice, just to wilt more and more, day by day.

Sometimes I really wish I don't have feelings. It does not seem to be worth it. To love is to be cursed, to always be at the mercy of grief unimaginable. One may even prick themselves on the thorns of unrequited love, a poison where sometimes the only damage spared is death itself. Feelings can be so complicated at times that words fail. So, I understand where the warlock is coming from, technically there's logic in what he did. At some point in our lives, we would have wanted certain feelings to stop, but the heart doesn't listen to the mind, does it? What a rebel.

But not to have feelings sucks too. I remember watching a documentary about insane murderers. When asked about how they are feeling, you can see the hollowness in their eyes as they shrug, replying that they committed the crimes for no reasons at all, zero empathy, zero remorse. Without feelings, the good ones at least, the world may descend to chaos, with murderers and cheaters running around. 

There are still positive emotions or feelings that balance the bad and negative ones. Without any feelings, life does not seem to be worth living. There would be nothing we love enough to stay for. Might as well set the earth and everyone else on flames. Desiring to be invulnerable is a classic case of 'Be careful of what you wish for'.  

So whenever I think about being a mean bitch and just ignore my true nature of being sentimental, to vacant my heart, I'd flip through this tale and remind myself I really don't want a hairy heart.