The Look-Up-More Society

There are myriad multitudes and diversity in type of clouds; from cirrus to nimbus and stratus to altocumulus. Clouds also maintain the potential for a wide variety of colour: be it a piercing bright white during a crisp winter morning, or the gloomy greyness and perpetual stillness synonymous with industrial backwaters, or be it the mellow orange-yellow-redness in the right circumstances of sunsets and sunrises, or be it the dark and powerful storm clouds of tropical typhoons - clouds are colourful, and also indeed beautiful. Clear blues skies are nice; however clouds give substance and character to their plainness. Clouds intermingle with sunlight, are both solitary and collective entities of the atmosphere, they bequeath the precious resource of rainwater, act as useful indication of weather conditions, and provide us aesthetically pleasing artistic shows as they are blown about by winds. They even offer us shade. So in short, clouds are important to us. Now you may be asking yourselves why I am going on about clouds. Well you see I became privy to the aforementioned and somewhat unknown information whence once I looked up. Something that the majority of people neglect, fail to see or do not do enough of is look up more. A while ago I decided I would begin the task of doing just this, looking up and admiring the liquid objects suspended above our heads, which fill the atmospheres and cover the skies. I had no motives or preconceived outcomes for doing so, but I found myself in a state of serenity, with an enhanced perspective of life after looking up. After a search for meaning I have been exposed to the serenity of clouds.

A wonderful poem that also deals with the eternal search for meaning is Exposure, written by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. It is the last piece in his collection of poetry north written in 1975, which deals with the Troubles and the problems of Irish society, thus reflecting a time of major change and many tribulations. The poem is centred on the narrator, an ageing man who reflects on his life, asking “how did I end up like this?” Heaney conveys unsatisfactory feelings about his life in the poem and how he has yet to make his life meaningful. He uses the imagery of the comet to portray a substitute, something that would dash into his life and add meaning, which he longs for. Now Heaney was writing at a time during great change of the troubles in Northern Ireland and their aftermath with its profound and unique experiences. Now, I have fortunately never experienced such profoundness or major predicaments, but in a small way I can relate to his experiences of major change, and the search for meaning. We have come to the end of our secondary schooling careers and we are facing the final days of a long engagement with this institution and its individuals, whilst preparing for the induction into adulthood and its associated independence, responsibility and maturity. Now, in this profound change, towards the end of last year I began to feel disillusioned, and began a search for meaning. Also, just as Heaney expresses a lack of satisfaction, I also felt unsatisfactory in relation to the way I am with my father. The nuances of melancholy employed in the poem are similar to my relationship him. Now my lack of meaning and my lack of satisfaction in relation to my father both became resolved when I started to look up more. Now this simple act has had a major impact to the way I view life. Every time I looked up and gazed at the sublimity of the clouds, I was facilitated in realising meaning in my life. Just as Heaney wanted meaning to be exposed to him like the comet, I was exposed to meaning by the clouds. Heaney was and I am ending a phase of life and thus I reflect on the Look-up-more society.

I had found a new energy source of joy and happiness accessed through looking up and appreciating the grandness of the clouds and the serenity of the skies. My daily routine of school, then running training, then chess and then the transit home began to change when one afternoon I suddenly saw something. I was walking to the bus stop in late afternoon, and I looked up at sublime clouds and stopped in my tracks. Above my head was something of serenity and I became capsulated by it. Now suffice to say this single moment is not what has had an everlasting impact on me, but rather the continual action of looking up at the clouds is the ideal that has indeed had a positive effect.

Clouds can be volatile. Another thing that can be volatile is my relationship with my paternal patriarch, namely my dad. Indeed I immensely love and am proud of him, but there are times when storm clouds of animosity begin to show, and somewhat vulgar interactions happen between us. However, one cloudy early morning day, as we were driving into the city, I thought to suggest to him to look up more. To my utter surprise, my father did just that. And so began a series of events that still take place to this day, the activities of the look-up-more society. My father and I never miss a moment to gaze up at the skies and briefly daydream of the meanings of life and ponder the nature of the universe.

My father and I decided to diverge from society, and do something different. We started to look up more. We started to look at clouds and sunsets and sunrises with a deep intent. This inclination enabled us to gain perspective and to witness the serenity that is all too often missed. Each day I would wake up to actually looking forward to commuting into school with my dad and his camera phone and my camera. We share this passion of looking up, and we send emails and texts to each other about amazing cloud formations we witness. This takes place much to the amusement of my mother and sister, who sometimes stumbles upon one of us daydreaming with our heads leaning back as we stand idly in the front garden beneath the serenity above us. Sometimes my father goes off into tangents at work about the wonders of clouds and their never-failing-to-inspire beauty. We took photos of clouds and emailed them back and forth, from school to work, and our common activity bonded us and helped mend a diverging relationship. I would post such photos on my online blog and exact some pleasure in doing so. We commented on cloud formations on early morning drives into the city, and we marvelled in their wonder in the afternoons during the setting of the sun on the bus home. Our daily lives became open to the serenity and the sublime nature of the big white puffy things above our heads, and more importantly our lives became closer with this common ideal. I would say my relationship with my dad is perpetually in contention, but there are times, in fact there are wonderful times, when we share a moment and gaze upon the clouds. It may be early morning in our front garden, or late afternoon walking home, we both share this interest which allows us to escape the harm, and attain some sort of happiness. Through this avenue we escaped the monotony and competition of contemporary society and we transcended into a state of content tranquillity, rejecting the consumerist attitudes and hateful prejudices rife in our times.

In a milieu of competition and elitism, I decided to diverge from this and instead of looking down at people, I looked up at clouds. I would notice these sublime clouds above our heads and realise the banality and superfluous reality of our contemporary lives. We ramble through life, trying to be successful, striving for the best, when all we really need to do is to appreciate the wonders around, amongst and above us. As Heaney writes in his final stanza of Exposure:

Every wind that blows;
Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet’s pulsing rose.

I have witnessed this once-in-a-lifetime portent, and I witness it daily, and as Heaney puts forward, I feel every wind the blows, and this enhances my life. Together a father and a son were connected by a common ideal, an ideal that enabled self-realisation, appreciation of the natural world, the bonding of kin, and an insight into the meanings of life. By looking up more my dad and I are happy.