ONE BREATH AT A TIME – Surviving the Plague

I’m an old man. At least I am when I think about it.

When one reaches a certain age, it’s pretty hard not to entertain, now and then, the stark reality that one’s days are numbered—and that that number keeps ticking away with each inexorable revolution of the planet.

And with each breath.

CURVE? WHAT CURVE?
I’ve been thinking a lot about breath during this COVID 19 nightmare. The virus attacks the lungs, especially of people over 60—which I am—and those who have underlying conditions, including chronic lung disorders—which I do.

Death by this infection is not pretty; if neither drugs nor a ventilator save you, it looks like you either die of multiple organ failure or you suffocate. Some choice.

So, yes, I’m aware, as those old deep-sea divers with air hoses must have been, of every next breath and where it’s coming from. And I’m protective of it to the point of paranoia. When the distancing guidelines say six feet, I maintain twenty.

State epidemiologists and their models project this sobering reality: that somewhere between 40 and 80 percent of Minnesotans will eventually contract the virus. And the way I see it, I’ve got to be among the 20 to 60 percent who don’t.

    I turn off the one prayer that seems always 
    to be playing in the background…and turn on
    one that feels truer to my nature.

A BETTER PRAYER
My emotions swing back and forth between terror and gratitude—if that’s even possible.

Terror’s a motivator, though seldom in a helpful way. So I’m pretty good at not going there. Most of the time, when I manage to draw in all those sticky appendages of emotion that attach to other times and places, I’m able to put myself entirely in the here and now. If there’s something I can do about my concerns right now, I do it. If not, I let it go.

Then I can turn off the one prayer that seems always to be playing in the background: God, please don’t let me catch this thing, and turn on one that feels truer to my nature: Thank you, God, for this day, for this moment, for this one precious breath.

OUT OF THIN AIR
It’s that one breath that intrigues me. Just now, for approximately the half-billionth time since I was born, it’s made my chest rise, and magically, imperceptibly, swapped carbon dioxide for oxygen in something like 400 milliliters of my blood.

How amazing all the little miracles my respiration performs for me, mostly without my even noticing. Of course there have been times when I did notice: when, as a young boy, I held my breath just to see how long I could do it; in my days as a high school and college athlete after the tenth or eleventh wind sprint; during my frequent bouts of bronchitis; while meditating; or when gasping for the thin air in high-altitude places like Mexico City or Nairobi.

        Nowadays it feels as if every single one
        of my breaths teeters on a knife’s edge
        of uncertainty.

LAST TO FIRST
It doesn’t seem a great leap then to go all the way back and imagine my very first breath, that one gurgling inhalation, on March 21st, 1945, that started in motion this precious, now-seventy-five-year-old cycle.

To think, any one of those near-countless breaths could have been the last. The one that fell at the instant the car in which I was riding swerved and struck a tree at fifty miles per hour. The one that occurred just when some inexplicable instinct kept me from driving a metal bird-feeder post into what I learned was an unprotected, live buried power cord.

Nowadays it feels as if every single one of my breaths teeters on a knife’s edge of uncertainty. Will this one be just another of those entirely forgettable, spontaneous draws that have inflated me all these years? Or is it one that’s just slightly off—perhaps getting short or labored as the symptomologists warn—boding that my efforts to elude the plague of 2020 have come up short?

Wish me continued success in not dwelling on the latter.

How often are you aware of your breath? When does that happen? Is that awareness shrouded in fear? In rapture? Or in sheer gratitude? I’d love to hear
from you.

THE BANE OF BREATHING – Should Twenty Feet Be the New Six Feet?

As the reputed “wonder man,” I reflect here on the rewards of noticing and celebrating life’s many small wonders. It’s a pretty easy gig when I’m feeling safe and secure; not so easy when the world is in turmoil and many of us fear for our lives.
Nonetheless, I’ve always preached that wonder lives virtually anywhere—indoors as well as out, in arctic cold and Saharan heat, all around us…and even within us.
It also exists in the ominous black tunnel of the worst imaginable crisis. In something as simple and taken-for-granted as a breath. Except that in this tunnel that breath could be deadly.
                                                       ~  //  ~  //  ~

I’m getting pretty good at paranoia. Not so much when life is normal, but for sure now that we’re facing a pandemic.

So, during these days of social distancing, I’m keeping a keener eye than ever on how people are behaving. And for the most part, I’m impressed with how thoughtful my fellow Minneapolitans are being, not just hugging their edge of the sidewalk, but swinging wide onto the lawns and boulevards. A generous interpretation of the CDC’s and NIH’s six-foot guideline.

PHOTO: New York Times

So how did they come up with that number, six feet? The answer suggests a question: What is it that those epidemiologists do? I mean what is their job? My guess is that they walk a fine line between recommending what they know people should do and what they figure people actually will do. Set the number too low and it won’t help; too high and folks might not feel like complying…or even believe you.
             How could we have let all those poor suckers
             believe that six feet of distancing was enough?
             It should have been twenty.

The epidemiologists’ goal, after all, is not to save everyone from exposure to COVID 19; it is to save the greatest percentage of us as is reasonably possible, given all the variables, including human nature. Perhaps they’ve decided that six feet is a measure most of us can understand. It’s all about “droplets,” they say.

ONE PERSON’S DROPLET…
As I observe my fellow human beings exhibiting a range of compliance from 0% to about 300%, it’s got me thinking a lot about those realities. That thinking, informed certainly by history, tells me it’s quite likely that, sometime well after the corona virus has gone back into hiding, we’ll all learn the truth about social distancing.

Palm-to-forehead, we’ll lament God, how could they have let all those poor suckers believe that six feet of distancing was enough? It should have been twelve…
or twenty.

It might come down to the definition of what is meant by a “droplet.” Current wisdom says COVID 19 is spread primarily by droplets of saliva or mucus expelled by a cough or sneeze. Subject to gravity, they supposedly fall to the ground before traveling six feet from an infected person.

But consider this: droplets aren’t the only liquid specks coming out of a person’s mouth. Normal exhaled breath is basically vapor, which is, after all, nothing more than still-smaller droplets. And this vapor, like other aerosols, disperses into the air, which can carry it considerably farther.

        To me you’re not average and very few of you are Joes. 

In a study of how flu viruses are propelled, environmental health researchers at the University of Maryland found that droplet dispersal does indeed happen not just through coughs or sneezes, but also in the vapor produced in normal breathing. MARYLAND STUDY

And then there’s wind.

IT’S A BREEZE
Air moves. So I figured if I walk past a heavily-breathing runner or biker somewhere along East River Parkway at that officially-suggested six-foot distance, and there happens to be a breeze coming my way—even the air wake generated by that person’s movement—their breath could easily be on me, swirling around my head, in a matter of seconds.

And there’s the chink in my six-foot armor.

Further supporting my paranoia, an MIT researcher suggests the corona virus may be able to waft up to 27 feet from an infected person’s mouth—though this conclusion apparently has not yet been rigorously tested. MIT RESEARCH
 

          Consider double-arms length distancing as you might
          the filter used to remove lead from your drinking water.

So here’s what I’m asking of my loved ones: Please, please be careful out there. Use more caution than’s being asked of the average Joe. Because to me you’re not average and very few of you are Joes.

Keep in mind the illustrations above showing just how widely, and quickly, a human breath disperses. Think of that as you approach others—and be aware of which direction the wind is coming from.

Consider double-arms length distancing as you might the filter used to remove lead from your drinking water; if a filter fine enough to remove the 85 percent of it that's deemed safe by people who don’t even know you, wouldn’t 90 or 100 percent be much better?

THE SHAPE OF BREATH – Finding Form In the Abstract

I used to think of my breathing, if I was even aware of it, as a simple, one-dimensional, in-and-out exercise. Inhale…stop. Exhale…stop. And so on.

That is, until I started meditating. In meditation, relaxing completely and centering one’s presence are all about breathing. I picture each inhalation filling me, body and soul, with light, with the good, positive, healing energy of a beneficent cosmos; each exhalation, ridding me of darkness and any negative vibe.

As I visualized my breathing, I realized I was seeing my lungs as a pump. And instead of the back-and-forth cycle of those hand-held bicycle pumps we used as kids, it’s an elliptical one oriented at right angles to the plane of my chest. Half of it is actually outside my body; the other half, inside.

The in-breaths rise up and toward me, releasing their fresh, healthful air at the top of their arc; the out-breaths recede from my face and then fall away, releasing their tainted air at the bottom.

The key difference is that the motion of my virtual pump never stops, nor starts. Like a ski lift chair, the baffle swings seamlessly around a hub at each end of its cycle, in continuous motion.

  Like one big, blurry Möbius strip, consciousness
  moves from one reality to its flip side without ever
  crossing an edge.

SHAPES BETWEEN SHAPES
So what actions or thoughts in your life have shapes? Are there times when your reasoning, instead of the back-and-forth, either-or kind, becomes more circular? Are key decisions or changes kind of like old RFD routes, meeting at crossroads with stop signs? Or are they more fluid, with paths merging like they do at freeway on- and off-ramps or rotaries?

How about your spirit? If you could step back and see its expression as your higher power might, would that have shape? Are your spiritual thoughts simply linear, intellectual tellings? Or might they, by entertaining more askings, spread into forms with width and breadth?

The world’s religions celebrate many shapes: the circle, revered by many faiths, including Paganism; the triangle of the Celtic or Christian trinity; the yin-yang form in Chinese mythology. Are these just symbols like so many corporate logos? Or do they have something to do with how those beliefs actually work?

I believe in the interconnectedness of all things. What I do here and now affects everything, everyone, everywhere, for all time…and vice versa. And this belief can take on many profiles.

Depending on my state of mind—and sometimes on the number of tequilas I’ve imbibed—it might be a massive, shape-shifting amoeba-like blob; or a shape of shapes, perhaps overlapping like those on a schematic diagram to create new shapes; or one where the spaces between the shapes take on shapes of their own. It could even be like one big Möbius strip, with consciousness able to move from one reality to its flip side without ever crossing an edge.

Have I overwhelmed you with abstraction? Sorry, I guess it’s just the way this curious, helplessly creative mind works. In the end, it probably doesn’t matter in the least what shapes your breaths or thoughts take on. Though for me imagining those forms helps me appreciate concepts that would otherwise be just elusive, blurry abstractions.

What’s important is that we are at least open to seeing our consciousness, our beliefs, in fresh, new ways where each encounter we have with them is a breath of fresh air.

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – Tip 114

Turn your breathing inside out.

With three quarters of a billion inhalations and exhalations 
in a lifetime*, it’s no wonder we take breathing for granted.

Then, meditating, you finally feel its truth: less in-and-out than 
‘round-and-‘round; no longer inside you, but you inside of it.

* According to an article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, a person at rest takes an average of 16 breaths per minute. This means we breathe about 960 breaths an hour, 23,040 breaths a day, 8,409,600 a year (unless we get a lot of exercise). The person who lives to 80 will take about 672,768,000 breaths in a lifetime.

INS AND OUTS – Breathing and Other Cyclical Wonders

(This is the latest in my series of reflections, As If For the First Time, 
describing the most commonplace of experiences through a fresh lens, 
one of innocence and wonder.)

If you meditate, I shouldn’t presume to tell you anything new about breathing. But for those who are open to seeing the familiar through someone else’s eyes—and those who’ve never given breathing a second thought—I offer these observations.

You know how a ball bounces off a wall with that definite pop as it reverses direction? How your teeth collide when you’re chewing?

There are lots of such backs-and-forths in life and in Nature. In some, the change of direction involves an abrupt turning point—a collision of sorts. Two bighorn rams butting heads; your eyes blinking or your heart beating; some cars’ clunky windshield wipers.

There’s another kind of to-and-fro, one with softer yet still distinct reversals. Swinging on a swing; a wave’s ebb and flow upon a sandy beach; that little bead that rebounds straight up just after a falling drop hits the surface of a liquid.

Like nearly every other motion cycle in Nature, these events include three distinct aspects: moving, stopping (even if it’s only for an instant) and then moving in the opposite direction.

     A breath is one of the few things in life that 
     changes direction without ever stopping.

WHAT GOES AROUND
This morning, while meditating, I noticed how different my breathing seems from all those other backs-and-forths, ups-and-downs and to-and-fros. In fact, the transition between an inhalation and an exhalation, or vice versa, is so seamless that it’s absolutely imperceptible. Indeed, it seems a breath is one of the very few things in Nature that changes direction without ever stopping.

Other natural examples of this are exceedingly rare. Perhaps the flow of a stream taking a hairpin turn. An eagle's swoop as it snatches a fish from a lake. The slingshot effect on an asteroid from the gravitational pull of a planet or large moon. Can you think of others?

ILLUSTRATION: NASA

As elegant as those examples are, I contend that Nature’s cheating. They involve motion that’s not truly back and forth—not in a linear sense at least. They all employ a curving element at each end of the object’s path, so it’s not as much back and forth as it is round and round.

Human beings have found ways of borrowing this approximation of back-and-forth from Nature. The cable on a ski lift, conveyer belts, bicycle chains, anything driven by a cam or crank. All seem to go back and forth, but the motion is really circular—albeit with the circle flattened considerably.

 When I think about it this way, the notion of how 
 many breaths I’ve taken in my lifetime—or how 
 many I might have left—starts to lose its meaning.

WHAT GOES AROUND…
How fascinating that the respiration of any creature that breathes—that is, the straight in-and-out path of the air through its nostrils—is so clearly linear, while the deeper sense of breathing is so circular. Perhaps it’s something like that cam or crank...but tell me how the mechanics of one’s lungs even remotely resemble a circular motion.

Whatever the cause, can you name any other motion in Nature that’s so straight-line reciprocal and yet feels so seamlessly round as your breathing?

Okay, this all may seem pretty arcane, pretty immaterial, but it’s the kind of thing an amateur mystic like me can’t help but ponder. I do this not just with the very adult notion of seeking higher consciousness, but also from an incurable, child-like sense of curiosity and wonder.

ILLUSTRATION: http://tao-meditation.blogspot.com

And seeing my breaths—a function I’ve performed without stop about 580,000,000* times now—in this new way is helping me immeasurably in my meditation. It's so much easier getting centered now that I can visualize my breathing not as something that keeps coming back and forth right at me, into me, but as a force, a miracle, that revolves both in me and around me.

When I think about it this way, that notion of how many breaths I’ve taken in my lifetime—or how many I might have left—starts to lose its meaning. Because it’s all one breath.

* According to the Sarasota Herald Tribune, a person at rest takes, on average, about 16 breaths per minute. 
This means we breathe about 960 breaths an hour, 23,040 breaths a day, 8,409,600 a year. Unless we get a lot 
of exercise, the person who lives to 80 will take about 672,768,000 breaths in a lifetime.