Look Up, Look Within and Look Ahead

Long ago, an acquaintance on one of my social media sites shared a unique piece of advice, ‘Look at the sky at least seven times a day’. It seemed so simple to me at first, that I dismissed it as one of a casual influencer-doling-out-gyan kind of posts. Then I thought, ‘Let me see how this works and what difference it can make to my life’. So, I consciously started trying to look at the skies at least seven times a day.First few days were actually bad. On the first day, I clearly remember having seen the skies only three times. When I took out my car to work in the morning, when I stepped out for tea with my colleague around dusk and later when I parked my car back at my home in the evening. That’s it. I was so preoccupied with my daily chores and office tasks that I didn’t even remind myself to look up from the screen, let alone at the skies. So, the next day I tried a little harder and more consciously. I took a call in the office by the window, so that I could stare at the skies a bit. Then, around lunch I paced up and down the office stairwell and managed to see the skies one more time. Not bad, it was now up to five times. But it stayed almost within that range the whole week.How is it so difficult to just look at the sky?! I can’t say that I live in an urban jungle, constantly towered by glass and steel, that I am unable to even catch a glimpse of the sky. The plain truth glaring at me was that I had let my mind get chained to daily activities to such an extent that my exposure to nature/environment was so little. So, I tried harder to reverse it. Whenever I stepped towards the water cooler, I would try to take a peek at the skies. When I wanted to stretch a bit, I would rather go and pace by the window. Immediately after waking up and once before going to sleep, I would stand by my bedroom window and glance at the sky. Cool, so now, this was becoming a habit. I was quite liking it..Why? Because whenever I took a moment to look up, I would invariably be reminded about the vast expanse of the skies, and how insignificant my life’s petty challenges were at that moment. Or on a terribly anxious day, the calm blue or the vibrant orange would lend a sense of calm or purpose that I didn’t know I needed. Then there would be two-three minutes of absolute thoughtless-ness that granted me the opportunity to recentre myself and proceed with my day’s tasks. Irrespective of the day being fully occupied or one of leisure, glancing at the skies gave me small windows of introspection within the day itself, rather than piling it all at once for bedtime.Sometimes when I am silently watching the clouds drift, my worries seem lighter and coursing away from my mind too. On other days, a colleague joins me, and we stare at the vista in silence. We make mundane remarks about the seasons changing or the weather that day. But it was a beautiful exercise to just stand in silence together, even if for a couple of minutes. Some other days, I notice patterns about how the city looks or how the canopies come together. Either way, it has made me more mindful of my environment and more aware of my own presence in a fleeting world. It has begun to lend purpose to activities, albeit in subtle, undefinable ways. Which brings me to the final part of this introspection exercise. I pass this advice to you, reader. Look up at the skies, at least seven times a day. There is always a reason to look up.