A Secret of Strength

Breath is a secret of strength. When I want to lift something that is very heavy, I stand over it and breathe in and out like a goon. It helps. Lucille Ball knew this secret, but also knew that most people don’t know this secret, the secret of strength.


She knew that occasionally, she could trick someone into deep breath, and that they would experience the blast of the secret. Surprised by joy, their body could be tricked into invigoration! If life is motion, frequency and occasionally, delay—then let us live in action. Action in the face of adversity.


If courage is righteous action in the face of fear, could it be that somewhere, over the course of human time, laughter has protected the infancy of this virtue? (Does our language, Dear Reader, have a phrase that means laughter in the face of fear?) How delightful for our generous comedians! Laughter may fuel courage.


Did you hear the recent joke of President Zelenskyy? A child, who was a patient at a hospital that suffered a recent brutal attack, locked eyes with him. “I think I just met the owner of the hospital,” the President said. Great gag! What an honor given to that boy.


What do these things have in common? Action, movement, laughter, and life? Human beings require breath to manifest them all. (Runners, the acolytes of Hermes, know this!)


I am reminded of ‘A Psalm of Life’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.


Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.


Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.


Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.


Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.


In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!


Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!


Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;


Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.


Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.



Meanwhile on the ISS, the Russian section is leaking air into space, uselessly. Again. 

 

 

 

Please find the sketch above, read by a digital being from 11Elevenlabs!  My electronic sweetheart is fake, but the words are always my own!

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