Page 52 - Writes of Passage
P. 52
from THE BODY: A GUIDE FOR OCCUPANTS
In breathing, as in everything in life, the numbers are staggering – indeed fantastical. Every time you breathe, you exhale some 25 sextillion (that’s 2.5 × 1022) molecules of oxygen – so many that with a day’s breathing you will in all likelihood inhale at least one molecule from the breaths of every person who has ever lived. And every person who lives from now until the sun burns out will from time to time breathe in a bit of you. At the atomic level, we are in a sense eternal.
Bill Bryson
This mind-boggling information underlines our connectedness to each other, to the past, and to the future.
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