The quality of air...

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Where I live there is a lot to do about the quality of the air.
In a heavy populated area with lots of traffic on highways and byways, the amount of fine dust is now being linked to diseases like asthma and COPD. Hence it is something to protect ourselves against ~ and while ‘healthy adults’ are not likely to experience any immediate effects of this dusty air, there is a growing sense that children and the elderly are most at risk.

Common sense says that when you live in an area with very heavy traffic, or an area where there is smog or an inversion layer present on a regular basis ~ these are probably not the healthiest places for any living being. Sometimes you simply have no choice. The reason which ties you to that specific area weighs heavier than anything else in your life. And so the best thing you can do is to find ways to cope ~ like for instance improving the quality of the air inside your home through an air purification system or something like that.

Yet there is a lot more in the air...
The air carries the first scents of Spring time, the warm melody of Summer. It carries the fullness of Fall, and the sharp cold of Winter. The outcome of an event is often carried with the breeze to far away places. Although, now that we have TV, hardly anyone takes a moment anymore to be still and to smell the air... To listen to the breeze...
After all, CNN is faster at whatever place history is in the making today than the breeze can carry the message around the world...

The quality of air I think is most fascinating is its ability to signal changes ‘in the force’. Changes in the weather, but also changes on a larger scale in our environment... We all know the changes in the air before a thunder storm. The brooding, oppressing heat, followed by this heavy sense of quiet ~ almost a quiescence ~ right before it starts. And then after the storm has passed that sense of sheer joy. A quality of freshness that goes well beyond everything having been cleansed...

The air can be filled with our emotions ~ especially when a large group of people deals with the same emotion ~ whether it is expectancy, elation, sorrow, or grief... At some point these can be felt in the air itself ~ they can be felt inside of us as we breathe in and breathe out...

And sometimes we just need to take a breather ~ a step back from all that is in the air, or perhaps can be in the air and just be thankful for its most important quality of all: the oxygen it feeds us...
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