Feel The Beat (speech)

• Jasmine Ryan, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2018

A beat is just a moment in time, a small ripple, just a flicker… so tiny that you wouldn’t even realise it was there. Life starts with just that first beat, in the dark and before light. Although the first beat you will ever hear will be a heartbeat. This will be the most important and life changing beat you could ever imagine. It signifies a moment of unity and a bond that will at times be trying … (It’s three in the morning why can’t baby sleep), it can be annoying… (Are we there yet?), infuriating… (Have you cleaned your room?) and even disappointing… (He still won’t take the bins out?) But that heartbeat can also be full of depth, love and understanding a simple moment of… taking your hand into theirs, an embrace or even a laugh can make you feel like your heart is soaring.

My point is, the rhythm of our heartbeat changes throughout life and is often beyond our control. The beat of our heart is the driving force throughout our lives. If you put your hand on your chest right now, you can feel its beat, its beating within all of us. Our heart beats an average of 42 million times a year. And by the time you are 80, it has beat more than 3363 million times.

Put your hand on your heart, everyone dances to the beat of their own music. The rhythm of the beat is constantly changing in tempo and pitch all throughout our lives. It can feel light and carefree and at other times heavy. But it is a constant beat to whatever melody our moods are playing. We dance day in and day out, from our first breath to our last.

Watching a horror movie can affect your heart beat. Falling in love makes your heartbeat race (Being hit by a bus does the same!). Having children can cause it to spasmodically beat, miss a beat and nearly thump out of your chest. Watching your children grow brings contentment and watching them have children of their own is definitely a form of amusement to all grandparents who cherish those moments when they look back and think of how often you nearly stopped their heart from beating.

As we grow older the beat can skip, it may flutter or feel faint. Its dance slowly grows weary, but it is still cherished. With illness, our beat may weaken and wither. Sadness can make it beat heavy and slow. If we close our eyes and listen to the stillness, we always feel the beat… it’s there to remind us… that we are still here.

From that small ripple that is our first heartbeat it dances throughout our lives, its rhythm changing with our mood beating out the moments in staccato… until one day…. It just stops.