A SUMMA CUM LAUDE IN THE FIELD OR THE DISCIPLINE OF BREATHING

A fear of being unable to breath has always haunted me. What a frightening prospect! Apart from our engagement in cardiovascular pursuits of one sort or another we scarcely pay any attention at all to something we do naturally, 24/7 — every day.

About what else can this claim be made?

We neither eat nor drink nor talk nor listen around the clock although I suppose there are those who try to accomplish these endeavors. We don’t sleep that way — at least in this world or not until we take the ultimate dirt nap. Nor do we drive or read or study or learn or watch TV or even stay glued to electronic devices every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

Or do anything really.

And yet we take this crucial life-sustaining act for granted, hardly giving it a second thought. Until we have trouble. Until we are no longer able to inhale or exhale in a facile manner, without difficulty. Only then do we think about it.

The late great American poet, memoirist and civil rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou once remarked — drawing from her treasure trove of memorable quotes — that “life is not measured by how many breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” A poignant, sentient, delicate and deeply sensitive truth.

Sentiment aside, in real time and in real terms we can in fact measure life by the number of breaths we take. On average, a person at rest takes around 16 breaths per minute. This extends to 960 breaths/hour; 23,040 breaths a day; & 8,409,600 breaths each year (factoring in neither exercise which increases the respiratory rate nor the 44 breaths per minute taken by young children). The person who lives to eighty will take about 672,768,000 breaths in his/her lifetime based on an average respiration rate at rest.

Good breathing is truly one of God’s many gifts bestowed upon us. A healthy pair of lungs, the primary organ of the respiratory system, acts as an engine which helps drive the body. Breathing is as necessary to life as the heart pumping blood through the vessels and in fact the two functions are inextricably linked. All of the body’s cells require oxygen. As the lung capillaries capture oxygen, they send the oxygenated blood to the heart which pumps it throughout the body. Our blood and lungs also help rid the body of unneeded waste products such as carbon dioxide. These by-products travel via the capillaries to the alveoli from where they are then pushed back out through the lungs during exhalation.

So is it not reasonable then to try to do whatever we can to maintain and build the health of our lungs — our lung capacity?

I always thought so. My beloved mother, God bless her soul smoked cigarettes for nearly seventy years, blowing smoke into my face for almost fifty of them. And as I pondered the depth and breadth of her habit it became painfully clear to me that despite her mild white-lie protestations to the contrary, she smoked plenty while with child — me.

I was born 6 weeks premature, incubated for awhile and stood a lanky 5’4’’ tall (short?) on my very best day. No matter, she gave me much (as did my father). I vowed never to smoke a cigarette and have made good on that self-promise for 62+ years of living. I also became obsessive about enhancing and advancing the health of my lungs. I was fiercely intent on controlling what I could and evading despair over what I couldn’t.

Suffice to say that taking action to save the planet was never really my thing but the issues of climate change and air quality thankfully are being addressed by explosively-increasing numbers of interested factions and a wide range of concerned groups daily. Cities, businesses, public health advocates, citizens coalitions and too-numerous-to-name philanthropic organizations have rallied to the cause.

All of us are aware that carbon pollution wraps its many tentacles around and impacts global climate including rising global temperatures, rising sea levels, extreme weather patterns and of course a host of personal health risks such as worsening smog which inevitably results in a range of respiratory illnesses. Climate change or global warming is due largely to the human use of fossil fuels which emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, releasing these toxins into the air we breathe.

Reducing carbon emissions and promoting clean energy sources among other initiatives will help combat the negative impacts of climate change. Cities around the world are fighting the negative fallout of climate change locally — car-free days in Seoul reducing CO2 emissions by 10% annually; green building programs implemented in Tokyo; Melbourne’s eco-friendly office buildings; reducing the numbers of vehicles in London’s central business district by more than 76,000 per day; low-carbon building designs in Addis Ababa; Jakarta’s bus-way corridor through the city center reducing an estimated 120,000 tons of CO2 annually; climate-proofing low-income homes in Johannesburg (solar water heaters, ceiling insulation and energy-efficient lighting); San Francisco’s clean-air municipal fuel fleets, one of the largest in the U.S.; Los Angeles’ launch of a program designed to help commercial property owners make their buildings more energy and water efficient; Buenos Aires’ Bus Rapid Transit line — the first of its kind in South America — cutting the fuel usage of city buses by 30%; and the closing of Mexico City’s Bordo Poniente Landfill, one of the world’s largest, reducing roughly 25% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions to cite several examples.

Several days ago an accord was reached in Kigali, Rwanda dramatically reducing greenhouse gases and on a smaller scale, limiting emissions from aircraft with the objective to hold the rise in global temperatures below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) over the average pre-industrial temperatures. Beyond this point the manifest consequences of climate change including rising sea levels and the increasing incidence of droughts are thought to become exponentially worse.

The agreement also targeted the widely used chemical refrigerants hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs which presently account for only a small part of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but as powerful heat-trappers would make it difficult to avoid exceeding the aforementioned 3.6 degree F. benchmark. (For edification HFCs were developed to replace chlorofluorocarbons — CFCs — its predecessor, the dominant refrigerant chemical which was destroying the planet’s ozone layer. HFCs do not harm the ozone layer but add dramatically to global warming).

Federal governments and international bodies have proven to be woefully inadequate in their efforts to successfully address and begin to solve the climate change problem. Widespread and far-reaching local and collective efforts may offer a more sweeping and effective long-term panacea.

And certainly awareness in general is growing by leaps and bounds.

Enough of the science.

Good healthy breathing is everything. Simply put, we can not live without it.

It is high time that we all — individually and collectively — pay closer attention to it. If that means taking better care of our (hearts and) lungs through vigorous exercise, thoughtful eating, drinking, etc. then so be it. If it means being mindful of the need to clean up the planet and doing something about it, hallelujah; future generations will be pleased and we all will benefit.

Personally, I’m going out for a run now and I’m leaving the car on its blocks today. I’ll walk.

[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in June 2017.]