the sky grounds me
You know that feeling when you can’t get a problem out of your head? Those days when subtle rumination haunts your downtime with a sticky sort of uncertainty. Clearing your mind feels a little like cleaning honey from a little kid’s hair.
Over the past little while, we’ve been considering a move. My wife, toddler, kitty and I live in an apartment in downtown Toronto. With work-from-home and a lack of childcare support through the pandemic, it’s been getting pretty tight in here.
When I’m feeling a bit tired and overwhelmed, I start to see everything though the lens of housing and real estate. When our son won’t sleep, we need a quieter place. When work’s not going right, we need less financial pressure. When my wife and I bicker, we need more space. If only we could move, all our problems would be solved.
Some days, we crowd in on each other and moving out of the city for more space seems obvious. Yet other days, we take the stroller around our hood - our favourite pastime - and there’s so much life, so much diversity, so much inspiration. We start to talk about staying downtown, even though a bigger home here would run us beyond a million dollar mortgage.
We’ve been mulling this over for more than a year now, and we’ve been close to deciding a few times, but it never quite materializes. Rural options feel peaceful yet isolating. Suburban options feel comfortable yet insular. Downtown options feel vibrant yet overwhelming. But wait, how good are the schools?
As some of you know, my wife and I gave up our apartment and jobs and spent most of 2018 on the road. After meditating in a monastery, staying with family, and driving to the Atlantic ocean, we eventually made our way back to Toronto. By the time we started looking for a new place, my wife was in her third trimester. We were still nomads while photos of freshly-painted nurseries filled r/feb2019bumpers (a subreddit for other pregnant couples due the same month).
As our unborn son kicked my wife from the inside, we saw townhomes and apartments all over the city with our (also pregnant) real estate agent. Just before the winter holidays, we moved into a new place with a sigh of relief. That evening, our eyes flooded with an unexpected west-facing view of the sunset. We stepped out onto the frigid balcony in awe. We were home.
In that moment, it was not lost on us how lucky we were to have that view. That night, my wife and I made a pact not to get used to it. We knew the novelty would wear off and we’d eventually ignore it for the daily hustle. The sky became a barometer for our state of mind.
In some monasteries, monks regularly ring bells reminding everyone to be present. In fact, the ancient Pali and Sanskrit words for ‘mindfulness’ more literally translate to ‘remembering’. To never forget is impossible, so they commit to constant remembering.
For me, the sunset plays that role. The sky grounds me whenever I forget the big picture, lost in my daily struggle. I had an early whiff of this staring at the sky on psychedelics in my 20s, but now it’s a daily habit (staring at the sky, not acid).
When I’m overwhelmed with parenting, entrepreneurship, and pandemic safety protocols, I look up. That mysterious kaleidoscopic spectrum above reminds me that one day, I’ll tell my son about the conditions he was born into, and how his parents tried their best to make it work. I’ll remember the intensity of these days as a peak experience of my life.
A few days ago, my wife and I were sharing real estate frustrations on that very same west-facing balcony. Exhausted from a cranky little boy with honey in his hair, the sunset caught my eye and I remembered our sunset pact. A pact we made back when this apartment was home without any question.
As sunbeams reflect off cloud canvas and fresh moon, I remember. We are sentient monkeys on a temperate rock, floating at just the right distance from a perpetually-exploding fireball. We’re completely oblivious to the 50,000 kilometres we travel every minute because we’re ruminating over whether to move a bunch of stuff a few kilometres next month.
Perspective doesn’t make the problems go away, but they sure feel lighter.