looking up...

“the most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love and to let it come in…”
-Morrie Schwartz,
from the book "Tuesdays withMorrie"
by Mitch Albom

You go about your stuff, everyday…you wake up…

you look at yourself in the mirror…wash your face…brush you teeth…take a bath…dress up…eat breakfast…(or not)…you drive to your daily destination…school…work…

you get there…
without even looking up…

our lives have been horizontally oriented ever since it got too hectic to remember the last time you looked up…to see the blue sky…

on a good day…when it’s a bit overcast here and there…not too sunny…not too gloomy…it can be a perfect time to be grateful for the sky…how deep its kinda blue can get…how it’s a great canvass for those magnificent clouds…and how it makes you forget, for a little while…and how it makes you remember a lot of things too…

some people are afraid to look up because there is so much truth up there…it speaks to you…every truth you believed in and have forgotten…or tried to forget…they’re all there…written in the blue canvass…it is sometimes too much for one heart…

but you can’t deny it…it is just there…waiting…to be recognized…in your own time, your own terms…your own convenience…it waits for you…to speak to you…only when you’re ready…

it is not easy to look up again for you who have tried so hard not to…but once you do…there’s no turning back…it’s time…maybe you’re stuck in traffic…then, you look up…your eyes mirror the sky…your face kissed by the sun’s gentle rays…your chest hurt…you feel your heart swell and your palms get warm…

this is what the truth you have been denying yourself feels like…
several emotions will happen all at the same time…you’re thankful, you’re sorry, you’re confused, you’re happy, you’re sad…you wonder for a bit and then it hits you…
looking up reminds you of what you’ve known all along…

to do the right thing…
no matter how difficult…
give it a try…
you won't see it the same way...ever again...

look up the sky…

make it go away

"Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart; My silent heart, lie still, and break: Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed for a dream's sake..." -Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Have you ever let a passion die? Have you ever been so disheartened, so discouraged and so scarred that you let go of a dream...and you thought it was not worth your time...it was not worth your tears?

People are often afraid to stray too far from the sidewalk (as that Kelly Clarkson song goes) because they have been so hurt to the point of numbness...they've seen it happen right before their very eyes...they've felt it happen right to the very marrow of their bones...like someone just liberally ripped their souls out like it was not worth anything...

So, they give up the passion, they refuse to feel too much for what they used to believe in...they put out the fire...and now there's nothing burning inside of them...

and they settle...settle for something safe...something steady...something that's not at all shaky...
Who could blame them...?

It's an act of self-preservation...to salvage whatever's left of their dignity...to redeem whatever little they have left in their sanity...

They would be numb for a long while...they would forget how it feels to hold a torch for something they strongly care about and believe in...

and then it happens...

someone comes and reminds them... and they instantly remember... like they were waking up from a coma...their memories of old coming back to life and suddenly they can't breathe...

They ask why... they beat themselves up, unforgivingly punishing and tormenting themselves for the big mistake of...settling for less...and letting go of the dream...and not believing it can still happen and that it is just around...lurking...waiting for the perfect time to find them and be found...

and now, it's too late...

In the stillness of life's ocean...there are tiny waves that remind us that there's something bigger than us, waiting to be unravelled, creeping from under the waters...undercurrents...waiting to sweep us off to places we've never been...

But when it finally comes, the question is are you willing and free to be taken by the waves?
Or are you strapped to a life vest?...

safe...breathing...living...yet not alive...

you refuse to think about it and a tiny voice inside you silently screams to no end...

"make it go away.."

and it doesn't.