Looking Up

I was walking around a few days back. I was trying to get some place. I would not say that I was in a hurry, but I definitely had intentions of getting there as fast as possible. Now, I don't really know about the rest of you, but when I am just walking to get some place with no thought for detours and steadily focusing on what will be, I tend to look down at my feet to see where I will be going.

This is a simple instinct, I think. Most of us, if we take the time out of our day to think about it, do this quite often actually. In the midst of my walking I realized this, and took the opportunity to glance upward at a little above eye level, and expand my field of vision to not just in front of me, but to around me.

It was a beautiful day. The campus was particularly gorgeous with all of the trees finally hitting bloom and the sun coming through in cloudbursts. I realize how pleasant the temperature was, how a nice breeze kept the air alive with the buzz of early summer. I heard beards sing their songs, students outside enjoying conversation and Frisbee, and even more in depth than either of those, I heard the general sounds of a nice summer's day.

It is not something easily definable, just a certain warm hum that envelopes you with living noises and the joys of life. I slowed my pace a little bit. I looked at the old brick buildings around me, grand in their stylings. They had been there since before I was alive, before my family had had even arrived in America, before America was nearly torn in two by war. These buildings had changed, I knew that, but there they still stood amidst the groves of carefully cared for trees and squirrels looking for where they buried their spring harvest in the twilight of fall.

All around me there was motion. All around me stood life, vitality, and the general activity that perpetually compliments a wonderful summer's day such as the one I had been bustling through with no care for. I continued to keep my gaze raised as I crossed campus to my destination. The sun playing off the clouds, the blue shining through in places, the sounds of cars in the town nearby, the feel of the glowing pavement beneath my plodding footsteps.

It was beautiful.

I enjoyed the feeling until my destination, when I had to go inside and begin my work again. But in those few minutes of looking up while walking I had captured a good feeling that continued to help me through my day of toils.

It is the simple things that not only get you through life, but also make it worth living. Easy things like this can be done, and if you so allow yourself, your entire day can be transformed. So the next time you are in a rush to walk someplace, just raise your gaze from your feet and what's in front of them up a little over eye level to the world around you.

The moment we live in is often much more splendid and beautifully full of love than we realize. Look up,  see the world around you and appreciate it for what it is. The future will still be there tomorrow, after all. In the meantime, enjoy today.