I’ve heard this song a million trillion times, but as an early 40-something, I got a far different meaning from it:
I know it is bad form not to post my thoughts first, but I wanted to get other opinions to see if I am off base.Hint: He does not miss the girl.
I disagree with your hint.
He misses her - it’s even in the lyrics. He knows he is the one that screwed up their relationship, and now he has to learn to live with the consequences. He can’t go back, he can’t fix it, The bridge lyrics are about him - he’s the one that hurt her. He’s just saying that she (like he already has) has to put it behind her and move on. Not move back to him, just on.
I don’t think it’s a hidden meaning song. I think it’s pretty straightforward. It shares a lot with Boys of Summer. It could even be about the same relationship.
Disclaimer - I think Heart of the Matter is my favorite Don Henley song. I’d hate to think I was misunderstanding his meaning all this time.
I’ve never really listened to the lyrics, but having read them just now, it seems like the girl left him, and he was bitter, and now he misses her and realizes that forgiveness is the only way to move forward.
Well, I’d reverse that a little. The song opens with him learning that his ex has moved on with someone new (the call “I didn’t want to hear”) and now it’s Henley who has to take the final step in realizing that she’s gone forever by forgiving both of them for their part in the breakup.
So, it seems like the first two responses conflict. Was it his (Don Henley)'s fault or not?
HINT: Under my theory, it doesn’t matter.
*snip. Hint: He misses “her” but not her.
Great song and one that can bring tears to my eyes.
I always understood it much as Just Asking Questions does. He’s just reflecting on how their relationship unraveled and now it’s her turn to find a new love. In the end, all we can really do is forgive and move on.
If it is that simple, then why is there thought and friend and ashes scattering about forgiveness? Who is forgiving who?
Oh, stop saying “Hint”. If you want people to talk about it, stop being coy and give us something to talk about.
I don’t know that the breakup was expressly his fault. He recognizes his part in it (“the work I put between us”) but also mentions “I lost me and you lost you” which would suggest some shared difficulties. In any event, he understands that it fell apart at least partially because of him.
My thoughts seem to scatter – it’s difficult to reflect on the raw relationship and understand what happened.
Everything changes and my friends seem to scatter – People’s lives move on with or without him. He misses her in part because she is no longer a constant.
The ashes will scatter – Pretty common remark about the temporary nature of life; he can’t spend his days in bitterness because they are numbered. Ashes to ashes and all that.
They don’t conflict. He acted badly and drove her away. She ended the relationship, but it wasn’t like he was blameless. On the contrary, he’s probably the primary reason they broke up. But she’s the one that ended it.
I don’t think, before the first verse, that he ever expected them to get back together. But the future was undecided. But now that she found someone, it is finished for sure. No going back.
I was never sure if he cheated on her. One can interpret
“What are these voices outside love’s open door
Make us throw off our contentment
And beg for something more?”
To mean he strayed, but it could also just be an existential need. He didn’t want a different woman, just a different…something. A yearning undefined.
Of course, “And how I lost me and you lost you” could mean she cheated. But people cheated all the time, then. Now. Forever. Cheating alone isn’t often sufficiency to end a relationship. (I mean, it is for me. But that’s me.) So they got lost in the emptiness of modern life.
All he knows is, the relationship is gone, but he has the maturity now to believe he (and her, but not together) can still be salvaged. There’s hope for the both of them, if they can just let go of the past.
Same as Boys of Summer. The video really made it apparent - the singer keeps reliving the few short, happy memories of the past, these brief moments in time, like old home movies, and can’t let go. There’s nothing else BUT those few moments of happiness, but that’s all he can see, even decades later.
Don’t look back - you can never look back.
Fair enough. I’ll post a fuller explanation later, but the summary is:
It is about the blissful expectations of youth: marry the high school sweetheart and have 2.4 kids.
Reality: The early relationship does not work out. It shatters his world. Everything he has been taught (his parents were high school sweethearts) is gone. He has to re-learn it.
He met other people, cheated on them, was cheated on, got rid of the “old” ideas, adopted “new” ideas, shed both of them, worked too hard, was selfish, she was selfish, etc.
He tries to process all of this, but his “thoughts scatter” and also his friends scatter (although his old man had friends for life). He wants to get to the “heart of the matter” to figure it all out…
He cannot figure it out, but he “thinks” its about forgiveness…and its about that no matter what…a semi-Christian message, if you will (or can stomach it). Let the past go and move on.
ETA: But he still hasn’t figured this shit out at the song’s end.
He says they should forgive each other, as well as themselves. I believe the lyrics are saying he wants her to forgive him, but what he really wants is to be able to forgive himself. But he won’t, or can’t, allow himself to. Maybe now that she has someone new, he can realize that he didn’t mess up her life totally.
Neither him nor her can carry that anger forever.
Because if you don’t accept your failings, you’ll be trapped by them. That path can lead to jumping in front of a moving train:
He had a home
The love of a girl
But men get lost sometimes
As years unfurl
One day he crossed some line
And he was too much in this world
But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore
Hmmmmmmm. I always get the feeling that he has figured it out / made peace with it. Something about the way he sings the last line - “Even if you don’t love me anymore” has a certain finality to it as opposed to the way he sings it prior to that. I mean, I realize it actually *is *the last line, but I feel there’s a lot of expression there.
Maybe this is better:
We thought life would be rainbows, fairies, and lucky horseshoes.
It wasn’t. We got royally nailed in the ass.
This was your fault, and very much likely my fault. Not only that, but after we broke up I got sodomized again, and I’m sure you did as well.
The fact that I was recently informed that you were in a good relationship made me selfishly sad, but I am happy for you.
I’m trying to figure all of this out, and I can’t. But the best I’ve been able to figure out is that we all have to forgive each other.
That is not the end of my thought process, nor does it solve anything. But if we start with “forgiveness” maybe after friends and thoughts and ashes stop scattering, we can move on to the solution.
You’re thinking of The End of the Innocence 
Man, that album is kind of a downer 
Or, better stated, once we forgive, then friends and thoughts and ashes STOP scattering, so we can figure it out.
That actually did make me LOL. I’m sure ole Don wishes he had (and I wanted to say 2017 awareness, but probably 1987 awareness :)) before he wrote any word of that song. 
Heh. I’ll endorse this interpretation, if only because it describes a large part of my own life, many years ago.
I’m gonna snip parts of this…bear with me until I explain why…
Well done.
It occurs to me (30 years after the song came out, and in light of subsequent developments) that maybe the introspection wasn’t about a girlfriend/wife. Maybe it was about the band and friends and colleagues he left behind (and later returned to), particularly Mr. Frey.
I dunno, really, but kick that idea around a bit.
—G!