You Took My Breath Away, and Now I’m Dead
<p>I made the mistake of looking up how many breaths a person takes in their lifetime.</p>
<p>605,491,200 if we live to be seventy-two.</p>
<p>So Elon Musk has roughly 100 times more money than I’ll ever have gasps of air.</p>
<p>Neat.</p>
<p>Worse — because it’s not like I can invest in more air — that if I put my breath in the right places, it’ll pay dividends. No.</p>
<p>And, rounding up to my next birthday, I’ve already spent 277,516,800 breaths. Upon realizing this — I couldn’t fight off a single, nagging thought:</p>
<p><em>How many of these breaths have I spent on useless conversations with people I don’t like?</em></p>
<p>How many breaths have I spent with one foot out the door, hand on the knob, nodding, saying, “Mhm, yeah, alright, right, yeah….”</p>
<p>How much of my ever-dwindling bank account of life did I waste listening to someone I don’t like talking about how stressful it was finding worm medication for their dog over the weekend?</p>
<p>I’m a frivolous spender — a serial impulse buyer — but I did not realize I was so irresponsible that I’d spend 160 breathes on lamentations over why someone’s brother hasn’t called them in two weeks and, “Isn’t that messed up?”</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/the-haven/you-took-my-breath-away-and-now-im-dead-dc5c320a8d04">Read More</a></p>