I haven’t been using the exercise ball much lately. You know those big rubber balls that you sit on and exercise, or bounce on… Well, there’s been none of that lately, and though I do need to exercise more, I just wasn’t feeling like I was going to be doing any of it with this ball.
Maybe I was just tired of looking at this particular ball. It is a ball that I have had for years, and maybe it was just time for a change. So, today I decided to deflate the ball and gift it to someone who would enjoy having it. As I removed the stopper on the ball, the gush of air hit me in the face and I thought…
This ball was filled with air, probably not directly from my mouth since I think that would have been hard to do, but air that was around me and that I was breathing in and out while the ball was being filled from many years ago. In fact, the ball had air in it from maybe fifteen years ago. Fifteen years. The ball was a time capsule of air.
As this gush of air hit my face I either felt something or thought something and was taken back to where I was or might have been when this ball was being filled. You know how we use sayings like, “Love is in the air,” “I can feel it in the air,” “The air is heavy today,” “The air is so thick, you can cut it with a knife,” “He’s full of hot air,” “There is an Air about him…” Air, like water, captures everything, knows everything, feels, senses, records, projects, sees, everything, and is everywhere.
In fact, if one thinks about it, Air is the closest thing to how we describe God… it is everywhere, it is all knowing…, in fact, it is probably made of the same thing that everything is made of, and therefore IS Everything. And then there is that fact that we are currently breathing the same Air that the dinosaurs breathed and Jesus breathed and…
So, what was recorded in that air that gushed at my face that had been encapsulated in that ball all these years. Like a Genie forecefully coming out of a bottle it had been locked inside of for years… Did this Air have wishes to grant me? Did this Air have things to show me, teach me, help me with…?
What I felt, “in the Air,” was what I had felt when I filled the ball many years ago. I was a very different person when I filled that ball. I had different hopes, dreams, fears, concerns, loves, hates…
The Genie that was Air did indeed grant me a wish. I wished to know myself many years ago. I wished to be a better person than I was. I wished to accept myself. I wished to love deeper, know more, accept more, live more, be doing more what I have come to do…
And as the Genie of Air came out from being bottled up in that exercise ball all these years, it showed me, I had become more of what I had wanted to be… And I am grateful for not only who I am, but the reminder. Because if today I were to fill up that ball again, or another ball, I would have different wishes and hopes that I feel just as strongly about as I did about the wishes and hopes I had when I was filling up the ball many years ago. But how often do we stop and see that many of our wishes have come true and juts as importantly, many of our past fears and worries have not.
I just opened a time capsule of air today and though I didn’t care for what I had put in there so many years ago, I am grateful for what I got out of it today!