I have discovered that I am not in a state of perpetual depression. It’s more a perpetual state of overwhelming.

I stare up at the sky, unable to fathom the fact that it has no shape, no end, just a vast dome of blue. Unable to bear it. No matter where I look, it just keeps going. It was what I wanted to, but failed to emulate in my existence. The only thing that gave it the illusion of an end or a shape was the horizon, cutting into it.

It looks like it was just the coloring in. As if whoever was designing this perceived world was out of ideas and decided just to add color, like an artist who intentionally uses background to give attention to the focus piece. How often do we almost forget to look up, to lose ourselves in the vastness of the sky?

Instead we’re immersed in infinite carelessness. No, we’re too focused on the solid and on the complete. We stop caring that we don’t really understand it, most people anyway, because most of the time it doesn’t affect us in a way we find direct and important.

Like when it rains. You can go a whole day only looking at the ground and at faces and at the buildings surrounding you. Until you feel the tiniest drop on your head. Then you look up and it’s almost like the sky is asking for attention, begging for its beauty to be observed.

Or when you’re bored and you turn your attention upwards because you think you already know everything else below that closely surrounds you. Or maybe you just look up by chance and see the way continuously rearranging drawings are set against the background of blue, how light breaks against them, coloring them and how little you really understand.

How the clouds come together and fall apart again. How you have to accept and be reminded of the concept of time. And then eventually you have to look away and all the magic you feel in those moments is instantly severed. Sometimes the earth likes to remind you of how unbelievable and almost impossible it is, even if it’s something as simple as looking up rather than constantly immersing yourself in the manmade. It makes you feel so small, so bizarrely lucky you are to be able to consciously take it in and marvel at it. I have to hold the sky up to keep it from enveloping everything.


How strange it is that something so marvelous and beautiful and infinite clashes with our constructed reality. Blue skies? Screw blue skies. Blue skies are idealist. Blue skies are one of the many faces the sky can take on. This is how we sell and objectify even something beautifully natural and genuine.

Cloudless? What would the sky be without clouds? Just an unpainted canvas. Blue skies are uninteresting. Blue skies are overvalued. It’s so much more interesting when the light and the atmosphere mix to create an array of colors that the white of the clouds amplifies. It reminds a person of the power of their consciousness and their sight and their life and the fluidity of time and how subjective the idea of perfection really is. We create our own perfection. In fact, the sunrise and sunset are the only times of day when it truly is worth all the pain and struggle of being awake becomes so obviously worth it.

It is constant yet always changing. It is infinite yet confined only to the oppressive lines of the horizons in our view. It is beautiful yet sometimes painful to look at. It is endlessly symbolic and metaphorical yet a defining part of reality and our scientific knowledge. It can show us the relationship between something we feel is subjective and unreachable, yet we interact with it every day, sometimes destroying it in our growing ignorance. We have direct contact with the sky, even if it seems so damn far away. It’s what gives the word ‘time’ at least a little comprehensible meaning.

Yet, the present is always. That’s the only way I can wrap my head around the idea of the present, of a present that expands the universe. They’re both nonsensical concepts. So why not combine them to form one that makes sense?

People say we shouldn’t keep our heads in the clouds, that we should remain forever in this grounded ‘reality’. But they’re wrong. So wrong. Keeping your head in the clouds actually grounds you and reminds of what reality really is and how surreal it can sometimes feel. It reminds of your senses and how you can feel the ground beneath your feet and how you can move and touch and learn and breathe. How when you look down at your hands they feel somehow yours and not, how they move, how they help interact with the world around.

Because when you’re reaching upwards, what exactly is it you’re reaching for? I mean, really. Think about it. You see, that’s where reality comes in. You want to fly, you want to soar through the sky? Really? People are just never satisfied with being observers. I like being an observer. Sometimes I prefer contemplating to knowing and understanding. Just sometimes though.

Nothing is really fixed. The sooner we realize that the more we’ll look into the sky without it even having to ask. Most of the things we say are incorrect or nonsensical concepts. This is exactly why we use them when talking about the things we don’t fully understand. Which is most things, so be perfectly honest.

Our minds are not boxes to be crammed full with knowledge to the point of bursting. Our minds are more like a multitude of streams and rivers, picking up the things they can carry, leaving others behind, creating tiny cracks in the walls of your consciousness so they can expand but not flood. Because the water needs to remain flowing, remain moving, picking up new things as they leave behind the ones that have gotten too heavy because the pieces connect and drop, becoming emberdded in the dirt of the streams, being smoothed over like rocks.

Otherwise you just have a head full of still, heavy water if you want to imagine it objectively. The ideas remain under the influence of the water; they just don’t circulate quite as much. It’s a nice concept, if a little flawed. I don’t want to know and understand everything (another nonsensical concept). But I do want to know and understand a hell of a lot more than I ever will.

Because it’s having the ‘’gift’’ or consciousness and not using it to its full capability that is the biggest ‘screw you’ you could give to the universe. And yet, everything (and again) is conceptual and contextual. The universe gives you suffering as well as consciousness. It gives you an infinite amount of knowledge, yet limits the amount you can perceive. So do we really owe it anything? I don’t really know. I’m trying to know but at the moment it remains a tiny speck floating in the rivers of my mind, not really connecting to anything else. But we do owe it to ourselves. To really grow and use our capability to the fullest we must first take the biggest step. To develop into real and complex individuals, to lead something of a ‘’good life’’, we actually have to care. I’m not looking to change and shape the universe. I am however, looking to change and shape ‘my’ world, the barriers in which I and the people that most closely surround me exist. For purely selfish reasons. And I don’t mind admitting that.

We just need to learn not to be afraid of constructing and shaping our own worlds and barriers. Only then do I think can we have any impact on them at all. I don’t have any power in the universe. None. But whether or not I have power and control in something of my own construction... well, that’s something else entirely. I think, anyway. It must be partly, anyway.


Don’t live for anything apart from genuine intellectual curiosity and an attachment to pure, undiluted joy and love. Just don’t forget about the sky. Not forgetting about the sky will help you with not forgetting about everything else there is to cherish end allow yourself to be enveloped in.