Long before anybody knew the mechanisms, we knew that breathing sustained life. When you do contemplate what happens with every breath, 20,000 times a day, the flawless ballet of it is astonishing. It all happens beneath our awareness, a background script. When we turn attention to what is actually happening when we simply breathe, the complex choreography that keeps us in perfect balance, it offers a whole new appreciation for each breath. 

Breathing with lungs has been happening for 300 million years. For the last 10,000 years, we’ve put our clever human brains to work trying to understand it – what the breath does, how the heart works, why we seem to need air. Marvel at how many mysteries we’ve unlocked.  

Breathing doesn’t need us to know to do it, to try to do it – it all happens perfectly just on its own, right when we need it. How’s that for a metaphor for accepting the gifts of life?

When you think of all that’s happening in your body with a simple breath, it feels like the most marvelous act in all of creation. And yet billions upon billions of animals do it thousands of times a day. Look closer, and living things are a wonder.