“It took my breath away.”

I noticed quite a few people used the words,“It took my breath away” to describe their reaction to the rude mistreatment of Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. I started to think about those words, about how we often use them when describing our response to a stunning piece of art or a moving musical or dance performance because we often inhale in wonder when we encounter beauty. It’s almost as if we want to hold the experience within ourselves, as if we are not quite ready to let it go. This is something different. This experience made us hold our breath so we would not breathe in any more of it. It made us wonder if breathing oxygen would continue to sustain us because our world had just changed so radically in front of us.

Cinse Bonino
2025