Why Do We Sigh?

Updated July 2021

Humans average about 12 times an hour. Many are involuntary, others are related to an emotion; such as anxiety, pleasure, frustration. What can they tell us?

Good Sighs

Back in 2014, when I first started living in Mexico part-time, I’d be on high alert and apprehensive the moment I crossed the Mexican border, worried about the language barrier, Mexican opportunism and the violence I’d read about in Sinaloa, the state where I usually live in Mexico (My well-meaning friends in the US like to share horrific travel advisories.)

But buckling up on a Volaris flight during my last trip back into Mexico, I glanced around at the good-humored, laughing Mexicans surrounding me and surprised myself when I involuntarily let out an audible sigh of relief instead of apprehension. A friend who drives down from Arizona rather than flying says she feels the same way as she and her husband cross the border. Like a couple of old bank robbers, we swap stories about how we we ride like the wind (to be free again).

Bad Sighs

Unlike these sighs of relief, sighs can also be sad ones. I once stayed at a friend’s house in another city while visiting sick friend. We hadn’t seen each other in years. She sighed a lot. She sighed as she rose up in the morning and sighed though out the day. From our talks I interpreted them as the sighs of having no concrete intentions, just vague desires for the future and no plan to take you there.

Moving from Bad to Good Sighs

When we’re young adults, we’re bolstered by the knowledge that we have time to recover from our losses if events go off the rails. We had the luxury of knowing we could find always find another boyfriend, get a new job or even new city. With time, it’s easy to replace those opportunities for adventure with sighs of resignation and think that’s okay.

We spend a lot of time setting up shop - making our lives convenient.  When things become too convenient for too long, you can lose your confidence in your ability to solve new problems or rid the obstacles that go along with making a major change in your life.

One day you wake up and don’t remember how you arranged it life as you know it in the first place. My friend, who told me she wanted to live in France when she retired, also mentioned she didn’t remember how she set up utilities accounts, it had been so long. Conditions change. This make us afraid to shake things up.

I am the first to admit to getting too comfortable. When I broke my íphone, I walked around with a shattered screen for months, procrastinating the research, the figuring out the features of new models, determining what I’d need. And that’s just a phone!

I know that’s how I felt before I moved to Mexico. I doubted my ability to make the dozens of decisions I’d have to make, and take the many chances I’d have to take to embark on a life far different from anyone I knew.

How would I ever negotiate an apartment in a foreign country (different language, different rules) or manage the logistics of life in two countries if I couldn’t do my own research in buying a phone?

This was the beginning to getting accustomed to solving problems without taking the easy way - just doing things the way friends did, in how I ran my life. Mastering the process of asking the right questions gave me the confidence to tailor a whole life to my precise specification.

There’s lot of problem-solving that has to done to move to another country. Being a newcomer in a country or even a new city gives you permission to look at life with a beginner's eyes. Moving to Mexico reminded me of the adventure problem-solving can be in itself. They are stories often worth sharing just when I was running out of them.

I have replaced sighs of complacency with sighs of satisfaction with each problem resolved, each stale viewpoint examined on the road to a life rearranged to my personal specs.

Sighing conveys a multitude of emotions worth examining. Take a look at yours. See if you need to make a change.

(excerpt)

When Death Comes - By Mary Oliver

I want to say all my life was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world .

Related: Humans sigh about 12 times an hour.

About the Author:

Kerry Baker is the author of three books, "If I Only Had a Place" is a system to adopt if you are trying to get the most luxurious places for the least money year after year, and how not to get scammed.

 The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life through living in Mexico part-time is her most recent book. It is a blue print on setting up a life that is the best of both worlds with anecdotes and insights into the culture that are sure to entertain. Most recently she co-authored, The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico, a cookbook of healthy eating for snowbirds, expats and travelers.