Life, death, and a small blessing
My whole life depends upon my ability to take my next inhale.
That’s all it comes down to in the end: A simple 3-4 second window of possibility. When that window closes, the life that I know and love ends.
The greatest paradox of breathing is that I must let go of life - I must empty out my lungs - to keep living. The body can’t escape this birth/death cycle. If it wants to survive, it’s unavoidable.
I can’t hold onto the breath either because I’ll pass out.
So, I could say that inhaling = life and exhaling = death.
My mission for the last eight years has been to bring awareness, joy, and wonder to this magical phenomenon.
That’s why I show up and write to you every week.
It’s an honour and a privilege to share my love of the breath with you. Know that you are never alone. If you’re breathing, you are an essential part of a vast, intricate, and magnificent family that’s bringing this blue and green planet to life. If this truth ever leaves you, return to your breath, inhale, and allow the trillions and trillions of cells inside of your body inform you once more. Then exhale and let the search begin all over again.
Now for a small blessing…
Whether you have a few hundred, thousand, or million breaths left, may they be breathed with curiosity, wonder, and truth. May your life be as transformational, expansive, forgiving, free, and open as the breath invites you to be.
May you be as accepting, inclusive, and willing to share your gifts with the world as the breath is. May you dare to breathe more life into your body through each inhale and give more of yourself to the world through each exhale.
May you continue to grow into the person you wish to become and may your breath guide you there. May your breath uplift, inspire, and set you free. May your breath be an anchor between the physical and the mystical, the material and the spiritual, and may you dance freely between both worlds with a passion that inspires others to do the same.
“May all beings be happy.
May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be liberated.”
- S.N. Goenka
That’s for reading.
See you next week!