What are we breathing life into? And what is in our breath?

Two distinct and yet somehow (in my tangential mind) related pieces came together – beyond the fact that I found them via the same source…

Last week I took the time to watch the TEDtalk of Jane Poynter as she discussed living in biosphere 2, “a model earth” experiment.

The part that caught me though, was less her talk on her experience there as her experience when she came back with us, on this bigger experimental playground Earth. About feeling disconnected. In her last lines (from around 13mins) she offers a lovely, delightful perspective on what to do when you are feeling disconnected
“Breathe. The yogi’s had it right…”

(The next lines I most certainly want to work into my family forest project, too!)

I meant to blog on this, and then I got sidetracked…until a few day later, while reading the TEDblog and seeing this “says Walter Bender [...] “It becomes a whole new computer running off the USB key; we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines.” in relation to the million dollar computer project and a $5USB stick.

Now I really value the project and love that we are sharing technology and giving ACCESS to everyone to tools – new and important tools – that are required in being part of today’s modern techno-cropolii.

But it also linked to another thought of mine. About what we are serving. When I was thinking about corn and how it’s taken over, I was kindly sent to Michael Pollan‘s work and his perspective of ‘us serving corn’. Or rather, corn convincing us [humans; USA] to grow it as a single crop. Like the tullip, apple and potato before it. And it made me think about machines and the machine-input-output newtonian state.

I don’t think it is a necessarily bad thing that we are ‘serving machines’. Certainly, I am feeding the machine. And perhaps serving it: I currently spend a lot of time in a start-up technology web platform company I work in…and though the relationship is mutualistic I still notice it leads me to spend a lot of time with my computer and technology and not spending enough of my time ‘storytelling’, photography or creating…This is my choice of course. But I am noticing the cost. I grow, put energy and breath into one thing and feed other things less.

Allow me to muse a little more. I think that we always, as humans, have served something to ‘progress’ or if you prefer the word, evolve.

Nature, Gods, God, Man (Kings, Priests/Church, Presidents/Leaders), Machine…

Another digression, this time to roots. As is so often, English words do not intuitively open their roots to us. “To breath into” comes from the latin, inspirare and conveys the idea of motion, direction, or inclination into or to a place or a thing. And spirare’s root is Spirit. Inspiratus, a word closely connect to breath. Inspire, too, is related.

It just makes me wonder about how precious where I put my breath, my life energy, into.
And where I am breathing, what I am breathing in…and out. And what I am breathing life into. And is being conscious of that enough? Or do I need to change it?

So, what are you breathing your precious life into?

PS I wrote this last week while stuck in a traffic jam (I wasn’t driving).

Tags: breath, breathing, change, machine, tree of life

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 5:02 pm and is filed under art, beauty, change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.