Do They Feel Their Heartstrings Nowadays?

Spring term is in full swing, and I'm taking a Psychology class as well as Anatomy & Physiology - III. This final part of A&P is all about the major body systems, and we start off with the blood and circulatory system. Yesterday our lab was all about that magnificent pumping machine: The Heart! What was so cool is that I got to dissect a heart (no - not a human heart) and really examine its valves, chambers and the muscularity of its walls. But what I found really cool is that there truly are "heartstrings." You've all heard the expression that some person or some lovely song "pulled at my heartstrings?" I never knew that there were fibers that attach to the valves in your heart that pull them open/closed. They are quite important (to say the least) and are easily examined.

But after lab I thought about the idea of heartstrings, in terms of my first college experience in 1973. That's when I first met and fell in love with the boy who would eventually be my husband many years later. I remember walking hand in hand through the campus, and cuddling in the student union, etc. Springtime on the college campus was full of young couples in love - their "heartstrings tugging away." But on today's campus (at least this one) everyone is in a rush, walking with heads down and fingers flying on their cell phone, texting instead of talking. Or with iPod snugly inserted into their ears, zoning out anyone else around them. I wonder if the entire scheme of falling in love, and those sweet and innocent courtship rituals of yesterday have gone by the wayside.

Do heartstrings still tug in 2010?
Cheers!
Ima