Heads Up

Last week I woke up with a super-sore, super-stiff neck. During the course of the morning, a band of pressure wrapped itself around my head so the neck pain wouldn’t feel so alone. I don’t usually get headaches, but this one was about to make up for lost time. It didn’t go away by the end of the day, or the next. In fact, it started squeezing its way toward my jaw and threatened to soon take over my entire head.

Since I work at an acupuncture college, I thought perhaps I should put my aversion to needles aside and actually go get a treatment for once. Upon evaluation, my practitioner had the following questions:

Do you spend a lot of time looking down at your phone?

Yes.

Do you have a good desk chair?

No.

Do you look down at your screen all day?

Yes.

Okay, so maybe there’s a pattern here. To no one’s surprise, my chiropractor also had the same questions for me. Two treatments later I was feeling a whole lot better, but also paying a whole lot more attention to just how much looking down I do.

Granted, as a wife and mom a lot of stuff exists downward. At least one of my kiddos is still shorter than me, the dogs are on the ground, the counters, cooktops, and a whole lot of life is just below eyeline. But the doctors all agree. It’s time to start looking up.  

As I made it a point to start looking up more, I realized it’s not just the direction of my head that needs refocusing, it’s my entire point of view. I’ve been looking down in quite a few ways lately, looking for problems, looking for what's going wrong, or what may go wrong in the future, looking at what I don’t like, what I don’t want, the list goes on...

It’s a bad habit, like checking my phone too much, or slouching. And one that eventually takes over until its negative effects have me feeling so bad the fun is totally sucked out of my day.

Getting a better office chair may help my posture, but it’s not going to help my perspective. And no doctor is going know the magic technique of getting me unstuck from a negativity loop. I’m a big believer in creating your own destiny. My favorite poem, Invictus, is even tattooed on my wrist as a constant reminder that I am, in fact, the master of my fate and the captain of my soul. But some days, even this permanent reminder can be overlooked.

Lately, my little family has been working out some pretty heavy stuff, and that heaviness has weighed not just on my head and neck but on my heart and soul. It’s still a practice during darker times not to let the blackness overwhelm the light. I think one of the most poignant scenes from my childhood movies, of Atreyu begging his horse Artex to not let the swamps of sadness overtake him in The Neverending Story, effects viewers so profoundly because we can all collectively relate to the struggle to fight against the pull of the lurking sadness threatening to swallow us up. Artex couldn’t make it out alive, and Atreyu has to fight the sadness, and the loss of his friend, all on his own to become the hero he needs to be.

It's no easy task.

There are many times that I wish I could give up, just drive away, or let the sectional devour me. There are times when the journey of fighting the darkness hardly seems worth the effort, and times when I feel too lost, too weak, too tired, or too unfit to make it through to the other side. There are even times, like Atreyu, that I have to say goodbye to those I love who just aren’t cut out to make the journey alongside me. So, what do I do then? When the swamps of sadness are up to my neck?

I look up.

Everything good I’ve created in my life started with a vision. In the darkest depths, at rock bottom, I had a vision of a future where things were different, better, happy. It didn’t happen overnight, sometimes it took decades. But eventually those visions, or something like them, became reality. So, I have to look up. Even when I sometimes forget and get too used to looking down for too long. I look up at what I want, at what is waiting for me, and at what I am meant for.

So, this time I forgot to look up for a little too long. But thankfully, life is always there to give you a gentle reminder, or a horrible raging headache for three days straight when you’ve avoided all those gentle reminders the weeks prior.

My neck and head are mostly all better now, but the aches and pains keep me in check as a reminder to take care of myself, and mind where I am looking and where I want to be. The crick in my neck is now a heads up, to do my best to keep my head up, because it always feels better than looking down.