Saans

The Hindi word saans—breath—descends from the Sanskrit śvāsa, which shares a root with an ancient Proto-Indo-European word for breath and spirit.

This same root gave Greek its word psyche—originally meaning breath, then soul, then mind. It gave Latin spiritus—breath becoming spirit. It gave Sanskrit ātman—breath becoming the eternal self.

Across thousands of miles and thousands of years, humans kept making the same poetic leap: what animates the body must be what makes us us. The breath that enters at birth and leaves at death must be the soul itself.

When you say saans in Hindi, you're speaking a word that remembers when breathing and being were indistinguishable—when to lose your breath was, literally, to lose yourself.