Each breath you take has something like 27 sextillion atoms. That’s 27 with 21 zeros behind it. These are mostly oxygen, nitrogen and other gases.

 A

Each breath you take has something like 27 sextillion atoms. That’s 27 with 21 zeros behind it. These are mostly oxygen, nitrogen and other gases.

A

Where did this air come from? These molecules came from the plants, forests and oceans. They came from a photosynthesizing bed of tulips, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and a billion dead animals. They came from corn and wheat, dinosaurs and avocados. The composition of air draws on a mixture of every life form on earth, past and present. 

A

It means each breath of air you take contains atoms from every other person who has breathed. This includes Jesus, Mother Teresa, and you guessed it – Hitler.

A

We aren’t just absorbing the air. The air is becoming part of us. 

A

Your body is made up of mostly nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and hydrogen atoms. Where do you think most of these atoms come from? They are borrowed from the environment around you. They are not “yours.”

A

It’s estimated Hitler had 473 million breaths in his lifetime. That’s a lot of exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The CO2 atoms from Hitlers breathe, inside his body – part of him – was used as fuel for plants; let’s just say sweet potatoes. That sweet potato was eaten by your grandma, some atoms of which were incorporated in her body (muscle, fat, water etc). This tuber, full of healthy Vitamin A and beta-carotene, changed the gene expression of her DNA. Years later, you were born. Your unique DNA has a trace of Hitlers breath, too.

A

EINSTEIN - A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.”

A

The more you look, the more you’ll find that everything is just borrowing from nature. It’s inescapable. What you borrow is in turn becoming part of you in a never-ending cycle.

A

For hundreds of thousands of years I have been dust-grains floating and flying in the will of the air, often forgetting ever being in that state.”

— Rumi

A

This thinking could be rooted in religious upbringing. For example, Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, which has been extensively studied by Western psychologists such as Paul Ekman, calls for recognising emotions and embracing pain as part of the human condition. It places emphasis on understanding the nature of pain and the reasons that lead to it. Many modern psychological practices such as dialectical behaviour therapy now employ this approach of recognising and naming emotions in treating depression and anxiety.

A