"We don’t think about air, but from the moment every one of us left our mother’s body to the last gasp on our death bed we need air fifteen to forty times a minute.
We breathe air deep into the most moist, warm, intimate parts of our bodies, and we fuse to the air. When you think of the destiny of the air we breathe in, our lungs are filled with about 300 million alveoli - these little capsules. We need all of those alveoli to make all the surface area to come into contact with the air. When you flatten out all of the alveoli into two dimensions they would cover a tennis court. So that much surface area is wrinkled up into our lungs. And lining each alveolus, is a three layered membrane called a surfactant. The surfactant reduces surface tension, so when the air comes into contact with it, it fuses to the surfactant. Carbon dioxide rushes out, oxygen and whatever else is in that air is sucked into our bodies. The oxygen is picked up by red blood cells and with every beat of our heart the oxygen is delivered to all parts of our bodies.
The point is, you can’t draw a line and say the air ends here and I begin there. There is no line. The air is in us. It is fused to us, and it’s circulating throughout our bodies. We are the air in the most profound way. And when I tell children that we are the air and that air isn’t a vacuum or empty space - is a substance - so what comes out of my nose goes straight up yours they immediately go. I guess they think we’ve got a little bubble of air that’s marked “Mary” or “Johnny.” Air is a substance that imbeds us. The whole American notion that we’re John Wayne riding in the saddle, rugged individualist, is nonsense. We’re not separate individuals. We’re tied together by the matrix of air that imbeds us with not just human beings, but the trees, and the birds, and the snakes, and the worms that are all using that air."
Think about that the next time you take a breath.
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