I’ve been breathing for a long time. I learned this to my surprise in about 2018. The only times I noticed the breath, and I wasn’t even really noticing the breath, was when I was smoking or exercising (which I did only briefly in 2002). When I started meditating, I held grimly onto the breath, gripping the in and out of breathing to try to block out the cavalcade of anxieties and fears that tormented me. 

After about a year of mindfulness practice, my relationship to the breath started to change. I began to experience what Chade-Meng Tan calls “joy on demand” – that I could step out of the tumbling stream of thought (or raging flood of thought) into a cool pool of stillness with a single breath. A breath could bring me peace. A breath could make me happy. A breath could feel like a miracle. In this way, the breath became a friend. And not the kind of friend who shares her cigarettes, and not the kind of friend who gives you a copy of You Are A Badass for your birthday, although those kinds of friends are awesome too. The kind of friend that fills your heart with love for your life. The kind of friend that makes your worst problems, doubts and insecurities seem like busy ants instead of rampaging gorillas. Man, that’s a good friend. 

The breath is always there for you, whether you notice it or not. It was there for me even though I never paid attention to it. It powered everything I ever did, without any attention from me, without any care for it or appreciation for it – I took it for granted for 43 years, and it didn’t mind. It never quit on me in exasperation over my lack of appreciation. When I realized this, I felt like a 5-year-old who had never noticed or appreciated that their mom did absolutely everything for them. I was filled with gratitude for its unending, inexhaustible patience with me.

I listen a lot to the Meditative Story podcast. Host Rohan Gunatillake tells a story about a meditation teacher he had, and I’m paraphrasing here, who said, “When you focus on the breath, it makes the breath special. When the breath is special, everything is special.” At the same time I was learning what my breath was doing for me, I was also keeping a gratitude journal, and paying attention to the million things that were going right, the things I didn’t need to worry about. The pain I didn’t have in my knees. The bills I didn’t have to worry about. The parent I didn’t have to bury. I was surrounded by things that were going just great, including a breath in, and a breath out. 

And I learned a different relationship with my brain. There used to be no me that existed apart from my thoughts (and there still isn’t, but that’s an esoteric discussion to have with a philosopher, not me). My thoughts were always true, no matter how cruel they were – and no matter how changeable they were from moment to moment. Sometimes when I’m trying to get some quality time with my breath, I get annoyed at my monkey mind distracting me. But even this can be a joy, a hilarious goofy monkey. Monkey mind is your brain expressing its aliveness, like blood pulsing through your fingers and toes. We are fortunate to have such active little minds. There it goes, there it goes, there it goes. Like busy toddlers, sometimes they need a nap. The breath is here to give our monkey minds a break. 

Whether you use it for joy or use it to suffer, the miracle of breath in your lungs and blood pumping through your veins is always there for you. Whether you notice it or not. Even sitting still, doing nothing. In the middle of doing nothing, you can feel the aliveness. The blood throbbing through your fingers and toes and skull. The breath in your body. The neurons firing, a million thoughts – so many thoughts. You are doing nothing, but all of this is happening. When you can feel it all happening, that’s a good moment. You have to be very still. Because it’s speaking to you, but it’s whispering. It’s an urgent whisper, but you have to be very quiet to hear it: “Alive…alive…alive.” In a good moment, you can feel every millimeter of what an incredible gift it is to be a living thing. 

As Carl Sagan says, we are matter grown into consciousness. With meditation, we are consciousness grown into awareness of our consciousness. The brain becomes the instrument of its own healing. This friend that is the breath has healed my mind, it’s healed my heart, and it’s changed my view of the world, which is the same as saying that it has literally changed the world. I can’t believe I took it for granted for so long. If you meditate, I hope this gives you a friendly thought about your friend the breath. If you don’t meditate, I hope you’ll start a practice so you can find this excellent friend that can do so much for you. Start with 5 minutes a day, stick with it over time, and see what you find.