Why look up?

“Why look up?” a friend asked this morning after I posted today’s resolution, “Look up.”

I started posting Today’s Resolution on Facebook at the beginning of the year, intending each entry to be a small touchstone to move me forward — perhaps even mark the progress I hope for — in this new phase of my life.

Frankly, I wasn’t sure if I would keep the resolutions going past January but, hey, here I am. Today’s Resolution does just what I intended — the posts give me little goals to achieve as well as the opportunity to pat myself on the back for having done so.

They also keep me focused and living the moment, although sometimes, I admit, they’re simply expressions of an immediate desire (Bacon, bacon, bacon!).

When I put up this blog, I began adding photos from the hundreds languishing on my hard drive to serve as visual cues for the resolutions. Sometimes the photos are the impetus for the resolution; other times, I choose a photo because the image reminds me of something I forgot I wanted to remember. Both reasons account for today’s skyline photo.

I’m sure most of Today’s Resolutions seem cryptic to those taking the time to read them (thank you!), although I generally know what I’m trying to express — if I don’t, I figure it out over the course of the day. I don’t feel a need to explain these posts, but prefer to let people get what they need from them, even if it’s a laugh. Sometimes, especially a laugh.

On the rare occasion (three so far, I believe) that someone asks for an explanation, I’m willing to try, which brings me to “Why look up?”

Because I’m usually so busy watching where I’m going — or enjoying life inside my mind — that I don’t look up. I look at words on the computer screen before me, look around me and out the window, at other people, at my dog as she snores an afternoon away. I spend a lot of time looking down at the ground where I walk, watching my step to make sure one foot goes in front of the other so that I don’t trip on something that isn’t even there.

A look up in Central Park

But I like to look up. Sadly, I have to remind myself; otherwise I won’t do it. When when I do give myself the chance to look up, I’m always glad I did.

The day I took this photo, I was in Central Park. There was plenty to see on the ground, of course, as I was in the promenade with people reading and munching Italian ice, chatting on their cell phones, rollerskating, or simply holding their faces up to catch the sun. There were big and little dogs pulling their owners, nodding babies, fussy moms, and even a group of tourists breathlessly snapping photos of a squirrel eating a pinch of bread.

I stood to the side, watching the activity and, remembering I was in a park in the middle of the big city, had a thought to look up above the treeline. When I did, I there were the buildings, the city’s manmade mountains. I imagined the apartments as caves and those who lived in them as today’s cave dwellers.

If hadn’t looked up, I would have missed the view and the imaginings that went with it.