Life can be thought of as the span of a single breath. The moment our breath stops, our life follows suit. It’s a stark reality that, no matter how much we try to escape it, reminds us of the transient nature of our existence.
Imagine this: if I were to live for a full 100 years—an extraordinary feat, considering how few truly reach such an age among millions of people—how many breaths would I take in that time? Let’s break it down.
On average, a person breathes about 16 times per minute. In just one hour, that adds up to 960 breaths (60 x 16). Over the course of 24 hours, that’s 23,040 breaths (24 x 960). And in a single year, we would take about 8.4 million breaths (365 x 23,040). If I were to live for 100 years, it would amount to over 840 million breaths.
Every time I inhale and exhale, I am losing something, each breath taking me closer to the end of my journey. Each day, I lose 23,040 breaths. Over the course of a year, that number grows to over 8 million. Our lives, which span only a few decades, will ultimately conclude when we exhale that final breath.
This serves as a reminder: life is short. It’s fragile. And it’s impermanent.
There’s a saying that "the moment a child is born, they begin to die." It’s a powerful statementthat underscores our mortality's inevitability. From the moment we take our first breath, we begin our inevitable march toward the last one.
Given this, what is truly worth clinging to in life? What do we hold onto with such intensity that it makes our brief existence meaningful? It’s a question we all must grapple with in our own way as we reflect on the fleeting nature of time.
In the end, perhaps it’s not about the number of breaths we take, but how we choose to live each one.
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