Write about fresh air…

It comes with the changing season – winter to spring, spring to summer, summer to autumn, autumn to winter. Freshness is not the smell, or the sound. It is the taste – the taste of newness on the tongue – the taste of renewal, of restoration. Of the passage of time.

You open your mouth to breathe in the newness, the evolution of the air around, and you experience a different sensation than just the day before. Where once was cold, now is growth. Where once was oppressive heat, now is crisp autumn of life. Where once was moderation now comes cold, darkness, bitterness. Where once was a way of life, now is a way of simple sustenance – just making it – just getting by – just being.

To see “fresh” as a quality of the measure of the quality of the air, a hard, scientific measurement of particulates or infectants or smogginess, is to replace the reality of the experience. That is to minimize the way of understanding all that surrounds.

That is a smallening approach. “Air is fresh if the halbenberg index is at 3.0 or less.” Yeah, but is 2.999 not fresh? Is 3.0001 not fresh? How do you measure, with one sensor or a million? Take the average, the lowest or highest, or some percentile? Do you take readings in the morning? Evening? Continuously? Why the simplification of some things that should be complex? How about we recognize that there are a myriad, an uncountable number, of ways to consider this world, and if we are the ones who ruin our enjoyment because of gamification, if we are the ones ruining ourselves and our ways of looking at this world because we are so dependent on someone else to tell us what is a good or what is a bad thing, then we have lost.

We must return to trusting ourselves. We must return to being ourselves. We must recognize that there are more than one perspective in this world, and what is right, good, clean, or fresh for me may not be right, good, clean, or fresh for you. We have numbed ourselves. Our experiencing muscles have atrophied – and so have our decision-making muscles.

We have outsourced all such choosing to others – “Well, it was recommended in my feed, so I’ll try it.” We have absconded abandoned we have abdicated our responsibility to be in charge of our own living, and that has made us weak, simple, joyless, vulnerable, and, ultimately, doomed. We must retake our authority over our lives. We must again decide to decide for ourselves.

We must relinquish the relative ears and comfort of allowing others to decide our lives, and once again take hold of the authoritative reigns of ourselves. We must drive beyond the simplicities of creature comforts, we must push against the bonds holding us back and we must be free, must live, must smell and taste and see for ourselves that the air is good, is clear, is fresh once again.