Until I feared that I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
-Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Because I love to read, Harper Lee’s observation has long been one of my favorite sayings. My earliest memories wrap around the soft sound of my mother’s voice while she read to me. Until I started to school, she read to me every afternoon and even after I learned to read, she continued to read stories that were still too difficult for me to read by myself. I don’t know when it happened, but as an only child, books soon became some of my closest friends. And, I still have a number of books from my childhood. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women remains a favorite.
But this quote took on new meaning for me this year when I struggled to breathe for several days. Although I was grateful that oxygen masks and breathing therapies battled the shortness of breath brought on by pneumonia, I was so glad when I no longer needed such assistance.
To cope with future shortness of breath, I learned a little saying to control my breathing. “Inhale through your nose as if you are smelling a flower; exhale through your mouth as if you are blowing out a candle.” It works.
After we could shut off the air conditioner, which we needed late into the year, we opened all the windows in the house to let fresh air blow through. It’s an annual activity I have always welcomed, but now that I love breathing, I no longer take fresh air for granted.
At the same time I learned that I love breathing on my own, I encountered in physical therapy a man who had been terribly injured from an automobile accident which had left both of his legs and one arm paralyzed. He also suffered internal and head injuries, but he had survived. Someone in the group asked him how he coped with such loss.
Without missing a breath, he said, “I focus on what I have, not on what I have lost. And, I am grateful.” Although we had heard that philosophy expressed before by many people, the room fell silent with his reaffirming stance.
Just as most of us take breathing for granted, we also take so much more in life for granted. We criticize the slightest inconvenience - power outages because another contractor has cut the line; traffic jams because some poor motorist’s automobile has stalled; appliances going on the blink at the most inopportune time.
And yet when we look at images from around the world, we should see how blessed we are. Instead of complaining, we, like the man who lost so much, need to stop and take stock of the many blessings we have.
Since I’ve discovered that I love breathing more than reading, I count my blessings even more often. I now identify with our pilgrim forefathers who celebrated what later became the national holiday of Thanksgiving because they had survived! They feasted on the bounty of the earth and sea to celebrate.
Like most everything in the modern world, we’ve once again polished and expanded the holiday banquet table to serve more food than is healthy and to set aside the entire day to watch traditional football games. However, one of the greatest blessings comes when the whole family can once again sit down together and share a meal, memories and good times.
In She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb takes the breathing analogy one step further. He writes, “Love is like breathing. You take it in and let it out.”
What a message for Thanksgiving!
2007
Comments