Life's pulses

Refreshed anew life's pulses beat and waken / To greet the mild ethereal dawn of morning; / Earth, through this night thou too hast stood unshaken / And breath'st before me in thy new adorning, / Beginst to wrap me round with gladness thrilling, / A vigorous resolve in me forewarning, / Unceasing strife for life supreme instilling.

As a kid I remember letting my cat sleep on my chest, as I laid down on a random -or perhaps not that random- couch staring at infinity. What I did then was to try synchronizing my breathing rythm with hers, so that I would bother her as least as possible. It really seemed to work as she not only stayed there for a while but, from then on, it made her keep looking for me every time she got sleepy.

What really caught my attention about it all was the idea that perhaps it was the way in which we breathe what makes us who we are, and I felt it very likely to already have started becoming a cat, since I had spent several afternoons serving as a synchronized cat bed.

It would be right hard for me to say why, but it had nothing to do with my later atheist idea of thinking that by replicating every atom from a person you would be getting that same person (how else will people accept to be teleported when teleportation is available?). It had nothing to do with a biological or a psychological analysis on how breathing influences the body's methabolism or the blood pressure.

It just had to do with the tuning in of two different beings of nature, bringing together a higher order through a simple -though at the same time profound- bond. It might sound just too exaggerated to allow such attributions for a naive kid spending some time with his sleeping cat, trying to replicate its breathing rythm , but that's just about it. It's not something complicated really, but beautifuly simple. To talk about it and give names to something that acts in the level of the nameless is just accidentally veiling the true essence beneath it all.

Should we all be breathing at the same speed rate then? I would say that synchronizing breaths is not an elevated process on itself, but rather a well intended action. The importance doesn't lie on what's being done but on what's happening inside of you. The beauty and truth of it are shelttered on that time you dedicate to becoming part of what sorrounds you, instead of spoiling nature, whether it is by forcibly imprinting on it the pinch we think to know about who we are, or by investing the gifts of life and conscience in building a private world for our own sake.

What will I become if my heart beats in affinity with the flickering of the stars, my breath coincides with the swinging of a falling leave and my blood runs through my veins with the swiftness of the wind that heads to the horizon?

Yet how superb above this tumult sallies

The many-coloured rainbow's changeful being;

Now lost in air, now clearly drawn, it dallies,

Shedding sweet coolness round us even when fleeing!

The rainbow mirrors human aims and action.

Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing

Life is but light in many-hued reflection.

-- Johann Wolfgang Goethe

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