In a heartbeat

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.

That’s how Rent begins. It’s the number of minutes in a year.

But let's forget the simple question of minutes per year, and let’s think about happenings per minute, specifically, heartbeats.

The normal heart rate for an adult is between 70 and 90 beats per minute. Okay, now go back to the Rent idea, do some math, and you find that would be somewhere between thirty-six million, seven hundred ninety-two thousand, and forty-seven million, three hundred four thousand beats per year. (‘Glad I don’t have to set that to music...)

My question is, how many heartbeats are there between falling out of love and falling back in? And the reason I wonder this is because a woman I know – an honest, decent, hard-working woman - is definitely on the low end of the range. She marries husband, divorces husband, remarries same husband, but then he dumps her. She does not waste any time. In the soap opera that is her life, she has a son in prison whom she visits – possibly to explain her side of why she and Dad are divorcing again – and while at the prison meets the new love of her life: not a guard or another visitor, but an inmate.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred heartbeats,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Heartbeats so dear.

That's probably a lot more than her poor heart pounded out between heartache and new romantic bliss. We all need love. For some of us, the need is urgent.