Look Up
#2178
I caught myself digging this morning.
I was journaling, staring at a reality that isn’t matching my aspirations, and my pen was busy tracing the usual patterns: Why am I so slow right now? What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I just be more effective?
In mid-sentence, the flash hit me.
I wasn’t searching for a way out. I was digging a trench. I was asking questions designed to find justification for a state of low enthusiasm. There is a strange, seductive comfort in investigating the rut, measuring its depth, analysing the mud, and building a perfectly logical narrative around why we are stuck. It gives us the illusion of doing the work, but it keeps our eyes fixed firmly downward.
But you don’t get out of a rut by studying the mud.
You do it by looking up.
And looking up instantly changes your posture. It changes your breathing. It changes your horizon.
When we shift the prompt from a demand for justification to a call for orientation, the language changes. We stop asking why we are broken and start looking for where the open space is.
But those upward-looking questions are fiercely difficult. They are hard to ask even in total silence, even when no one else is listening. Even when we write them in the secrecy of our own journal.
Why? Because they strip away the safety of our stories. They don’t accept an explanation; they activate a response. They challenge us into immediate, naked action, leaving us completely exposed to our own agency.
It is much easier to look down and dig than it is to look up and move. One keeps us comfortably heavy; the other requires us to stand up and face the open air.
But if you dare to look up right now, what is the very first thing you see?
Or maybe, the truer question is: what’s out there, waiting for me?