Look Up!
I was away last week skiing with my family for winter break and the lodge didn’t have internet, so I couldn’t send out the newsletter. (Thanks to those of you who let me know you missed it.)
While I was skiing for the first time, my husband’s constant refrain was, “Look up! Stop looking down at your skies and look up and the beautiful mountain.”
As I was driving my kids to school on Friday all I was looking at was the slush, the inconvenience, focusing on the road and the snow, wondering where was the memo that it was supposed to snow?
On my way home my husband’s refrain hit me again. “Look up!” I was driving down a deserted block and as I looked up, I noticed the beautiful winter wonderland scene, the trees covered in a white blanket of fresh, crisp snow. I smiled and felt a warm embrace as I was filled with awe of G-d’s beautiful world.
It’s amazing how our lives seem to be this constant pull between focusing on the path, the road, the direction we are going in versus stopping to look up and enjoy the moment.
Its a metaphor for how we tend to focus so hard on the content of our thinking and try to constantly fix it, rather than stopping to look up or look away from it in order to enjoy what life offers up in the moment.
While I was both skiing and driving I kept getting hit with the thought how can anyone look up if they are trying so hard not to crash? I sometimes believe the best way to avoid crashing is to focus really hard on my next step, my next turn or my next thought. Not only do I believe that looking up would be dangerous, but irresponsible to boot. I delude myself into thinking that if I try really hard, I won’t crash and burn.
With this belief, I miss out on life!
Yet with G-d’s grace, I am reminded that there is a more powerful way to live life than thinking it is all up to me to focus and try so hard. There is a Divine energy behind life which guides me moment to moment, giving me the ability to look up if I trust it.
It may seem irresponsible not to focus on and think about all of our problems, but when we do that, we forget to trust that there is something deeper at play here, giving us the freedom to look up and experience life. From this vantage point, anything seems possible.
