The Moments that Take Your Breath Away
By Steve Gahagen
If you’ve ever had the wind knocked out of you, you know that, for a moment, you are unsure you will ever breathe again. The fancy name for this phenomenon is known as a "diaphragmatic spasm.” When you experience a sudden blow or impact, the diaphragm can contract involuntarily, causing a temporary suspension of normal breathing. This can lead to a sensation of breathlessness, and it may feel like you can't inhale or exhale properly. It’s frightening.
When growing up, my brother and I would compete against each other in every imaginable game or sport. We created table hockey and wiffle ball leagues even though it was just the two of us. We even learned to play baseball against each other one-on-one, imagining ourselves in giant stadiums. Since my brother was five years older, he mostly won.
Once, when I was in middle school, we found a newly-built tennis court, so new that the nets had yet to be installed on the concrete posts that awaited their arrival. We saw this as a perfect baseball stadium for two that would save us time shagging balls.
One afternoon, while competing against one another, my brother went outside the fence of the tennis court to retrieve the balls that cleared the fence. As he threw them back to me one went far over my head. I turned to see if I could chase it down running as fast as I could to make an over-the-head catch, but forgetting about the concrete posts. I hit one of those poles in the dead center of my chest running at full speed. I lay breathless on the ground for quite some time. My brother thought I was going to die as I gasped for air. I was sore for weeks.
There are moments in life that can hit us like that - tragedies, broken dreams, betrayal, a diagnosis, etc. Setbacks in life can be like those moments when we have the wind knocked out of us and unsure we will ever breathe again. But because of faith, loving friends, resilience, or even leveraging our strengths amid crisis, we usually do breathe again.
Reflecting on those moments and how we overcame them can bring an incredible sense of richness and gratitude to life. Often those wind-knocked-out-of-us moments can lead to a sense of awe and wonder because we overcame.
I recently came across a quote by Maya Angelou: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”
The focus of her quote is related to living a life of adventure and not settling for just trying to live a long time. We should rejoice in the moments that were so wonderful they took our breath away. But we can also find joy and wonder from the moments in which we thought we would never breathe again.
Questions to Consider:
Share a couple of experiences when you had the wind knocked out of you - physically or metaphorically.
How can we leverage our strengths to persevere and overcome the difficult moments of life?
What can we do or what habits can we practice to live in the moments of awe and wonder that take our breathe away?