INTRODUCTION

                                     I just took a deep breath –  inhaled….and then exhaled…..Seems like a silly mundane thing to be the first line of my story…. Isn’t it?

These are difficult times when just that one breath –  inhaling and exhaling has been the centre of our attention for past few months.  No one would have imagined that the entire world’s focus would shift to one single breath and one single invisible enemy that can bring it to an abrupt halt. There is an eerie silence across the globe that you can almost hear the person next to you breathe!

Prior to that, this world, with me included was too busy buzzing with activities, to do lists, agendas, daily routines to notice it.  A breath!   At the time of my writing this, the invisible Corona virus  (COVID 19) has devoured the world  at an alarming rate, as if someone sneezed on the East end of the global map and it sprayed all the way to the West for them to catch the deadly infection! As I write this, so many are struggling in the ICU’s for a single breath, their lungs drowned in their own secretions from the Corona virus infection. I wonder what goes through their mind other than being aware of that one breath!  It makes it even harder to breathe when there is no one to hold your hand – not a single loved one by your side to tell you ‘Keep breathing! You are going to make it through’.   Inanimate ventilators, do that wonderful job now, to keep those dwindled souls who are ready to give up, to continue breathing.  I am sure when they are hooked off those magic machines the same ‘unhooked’ person is not the same anymore when he takes his first voluntary breath! Ah!  Let us just try this for a second… Just breathe… just one breath…feel it ..savor it ….notice it …..smooth yeah?  So smooth and easy we hardly noticed it all these years that we were breathing…..Perhaps God knew it at the beginning of times, when He created man from dust, that  this was the one thing He himself had to put into a human being as his personal final finishing touch!

The Bible says “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”.   We became living beings because of His precious breath!

It is between this first inhalation and final exhalation we make friends, find a soul mate, procreate children, build a family, create businesses, make a living (seems low on the list now during this crisis!), find ourselves, discover our talents, influence others or let others influence us, mold and mend our ways to finish our race (not necessarily ‘win’ it as per ‘our’ definition) so that the generation that comes after us will know that we graced this planet once! It is but a short ride after all, compared the Eternal life that awaits us…..but how you run your race here matters to the One who breathed His life into you!

Today in the midst of chaos and pandemonium, in the midst of my fellow human beings struggling for a breath of air, in the midst of a fast approaching invisible enemy as I wait strong and courageous…….I am grateful that I am breathing.  I am grateful for all the million zillion breaths that kept me living and alive for the past few decades.  I am beginning to understand the precious nature of Life …not just my Life ….but the lives of hundreds, who intersected my life just because they were destined to share their living breathing moments with me….even if it was for a brief period.

Physics explains that when two inanimate objects collide with each other, there is transfer of energy. Imagine when two living beings (with the ‘Breath of God’) collide in life!!  Reminisce such random but predetermined ‘collisions” on this planet and the divine energy transferred and absorbed during your lifetime here on earth.  In this time of ‘social distancing’,  looking back at life I recall these ‘collisions’ with random people whom we take for granted  and what they taught us about Life.  Unlocking the collisions during the ‘lockdown’ period I believe will bring fresh perspective to  our  freedom  and   life itself when we step back into the world to complete the rest of the journey.

I realize, more than ever, during this pandemic, that in this cycle between an inhalation and exhalation, the ‘Fountain of Life’ springs forth to form a meaningful  and profound Circle of Life!