Up in the sky? Up in the sky

Tip #21 - look up when you're outside (and always)

This post is part of a series I’m writing from mid-June to mid-November 2024, on things that helped me rebuild my confidence, sense of self, and increased my delight in my life after massive difficulty in multiple areas. For full details and post links to all 110 things, go to this post here.

If you know me over on instagram you’re maybe familiar with how I like to look up at the undersides of trees specifically, but up into the sky and the clouds and the night all the time too.

Not just look out into the sky over yonder, but like wrench my head back to look at what’s directly above me.

Do you remember being a kid, if you ever got to trade off pulling a friend in a red wagon, or went on a little excursion with an adult in which you were part of the cargo in a little red wagon and rode trundling down the sidewalk bumps with your head back, eyes up to the sky while the shadows of leaves and spots of sun hit you in pieces and you were too young to understand anything except how things felt right then, but could imagine everything unencumbered by adult admin and responsibilities and things felt limitless and unknowable but it was fine because you were being pulled and could see the sky and feel it on your face for those moments??

When I take pictures of the sky, the underneath of the trees, the clouds and the planes flying through them, that’s how I feel.

Reminded the universe is literally right there, and right here, and infinite in every direction and we’re part of that temporary permanence of everything that also has been.

I like, in trees specifically, how the roots when they’re exposed a bit, mimic the branches that reach out to the sky, and how both those things mimic our nervous system and the veins in our bodies, and the way erosion looks and the veins of leaves, and the way the patterns of everything are in everything.

Doing this, observing and taking blurry pictures, is just a thing I like to do. It brings me some peace, some perspective, some good feelings. I don’t know that there’s any science about it, I just like to do it because it feels good to me. It’s solidifying, makes me feel sturdier.

I’m not really religious, I’m not very woo, I’m not sure what else there is after this, if anything, but I do very much feel a significant of the gorgeous symmetry of it.

Change your perspective and acknowledge the universe around you. You’re part of it, and you get to decide what that means.

ilysm - Marian