It’s funny what you see when you are waiting to be seated at one of your local restaurants for dinner on a Saturday night and because the place was crowded and I had more time on my hands than I normally do, I became a people watcher.  Like most of you would have done, I watched two women chatting it up with one another about something that seemed really exciting based on their mannerisms and body language.  I also found myself watching the group of young men who hardly looked up from their phones, who ultimately decided they didn’t want to wait any more and headed off to find another place to eat.  The elderly couple who was smarter than all of us who came in an hour earlier just to beat the frenzy and mad rush didn’t garner too much attention as the man held for the door for his beloved.

But my eyes were not really captivated by any of them.

No instead, I was watching this young family — a mom, a dad, a sleeping toddler being carried by dad, and a little boy who was about 3.  That little boy took me back to when my boys were that young and I remembering smiling to myself, trying to grab a hold of those memories once again as I reminisced about their innocence and immediately thought of how quickly that time just seemed to pass.

And as this little boy stood between his mom and dad, in this packed room of adults, I noticed that he spent a lot of time looking up, trying to see everything he could see.

Maybe his view was a little like this…

As I watched this little boy take in his surroundings, I began to realize that most adults don’t look up…we look straight ahead or down.

When was the last time you “looked up” and saw things a little differently?

Have you marveled at the colors of the morning or evening sky recently?

Have you found excitement in getting to the peak or highest point of a mountain ever?

Life will bring us down if we let it.  It is easy to be swallowed up by the negativity, hate, and bitterness that exists practically everywhere.  It’s hard to stay in a bad mood when we take time to look at the full moon or the abundance of stars we see without the moon.

Why do those things excite us so?

Because there are things just out of reach that we want.  We see them, but we just can’t get there yet.  Eventually time will allow us to grow taller so the adults don’t seem to be towering over us.  As adults we need to take time to be amazed at the much bigger world out there and the vastness of the galaxy.

As a kid, I remember finding the Redwoods of Northern California very intimidating — these trees have grown for hundreds of years and some for more than a thousand years, with the tallest tree standing at 379 feet. – US National Park Service

Life is short — don’t waste it staring at the ground.  Find something that is bigger than you and it’s size will remind you of the things you are missing that are just above your head.  It’s easy to pretend it doesn’t matter and it’s to forget to wonder about the things that aren’t staring at us right in the face.

Sometimes, we catch the glimpse of a balloon that somehow escaped the hand of the child that accidentally slip through his fingers and we watch it travel higher and higher until we can’t see it anymore.  

Or we watch the taking off of an airplane until it fades into the clouds just as if it had been swallowed whole.

Or maybe we find the rainbow after a light snow shower exciting as it shares its colors for all to see.

Look up more…you just might see something that you have been missing all along.

Michelle A. Homme 2016 ©