Get a Sky High
Looking Up Can Boost Your Emotions — and Brighten Your Day
By Peter Landry
Whenever March rolls around, I get antsy for better days ahead.
The cold hangs on, hard as iron in the bones. Sooty patches of snow linger under bushes. The litter of winter surfaces along paths and roadsides as snowbanks slowly shrink. And that’s not mentioning dog poop, which people somehow feel they don’t have to pick up if there’s snow on the ground.
Even with hints of green and blossom, March is a gray landscape, dull to the eye and duller to the spirit.
How do you deal with the dull?
With the land still locked in winter, I look to the sky for guidance. And on good days, for inspiration.
The sky reveals a lot about life, and helps us manage expectation.
“Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,” we used to say on the coast of Maine, and I still take a look first thing each day.
I’m often up as the sun comes over the trees in our back yard, and I look out — and up — even before I’ve had my coffee.
“Gauge the day,” as a Mainer might say. “See what’s comin’.”
Good days will have glorious oranges, pinks and yellows. Sort-of-good days will have a sliver of orange under the clouds, or a thin burst of yellow light. Dreary days will be 50 shades of gray (without the kinkiness).
And if there’s stuff falling out of the sky, white or wet, it’s usually going to be a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, to quote the Alexander hero of children’s books. (I admit I love a good snowfall if I have nothing to do, but sleet and rain? No thanks.)
Looking up can be an emotional lift, the embodiment of metaphor.
Nothing can match a great sunrise. Or the boost of a bright blue sky over pink and yellow spring buds.
And I always smile when I see “Simpsons Clouds” unfolding — those fluffy powder puffs featured in the opening credits of the TV classic (officially they’re “cumulus”).
There are dappled skies and mackerel skies, mare’s tails and buttermilk, “rows and flows of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air” (if you’re a Joni Mitchell fan).
All give a hint of the weather, and, to me at least, all convey a mood for the day. Take stock, get ready, get moving.
I like when the mood is bright. There’s nothing better than looking up and deciding “this is going to be a good day.”
My instinct tells me that looking at the sky is good for me.
But a little Google work reveals it IS good for me, scientifically, in emotional and healthful ways.
Looking at the sky offers a range of emotional benefits, health experts say, primarily by producing a sense of awe and promoting mindfulness and well-being.
If you read this column, you know that mindfulness and well-being are the cornerstones of my premise that Simple Pleasures are good for the soul.
Sky-gazing can lead to reduced stress and a broader perspective on life. There’s even a name for it — “Skychology” — and it is is considered a form of nature therapy.
Skychology is a combination of the words “sky” and “psychology” — get it?! — and it helps reduce stress and anxiety by activating the “parasympathetic nervous system,” the scientists say. This mouthful of a system promotes “rest and digest” behavior that helps to lower the stress hormone cortisol, calm your heart rate and lower blood pressure.
Looking up can help ground you, according to the “Unplugged” network, provide a sense of perspective and make your problems feel smaller compared to the vastness of the sky above.
It inspires awe and wonder, which studies have shown boost positive emotions, increase feelings of happiness and even promote behaviors like kindness and generosity.
A 2015 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that exposure to wide open spaces like the sky can lead to a greater sense of well-being, reduce feelings of confinement and boost emotions and mental health.
And here I thought it just made me feel good when I see the yellows and oranges of dawn.
It’s great to have scientific back-up, but I don’t need highfalutin studies to urge people to go outside and look up.
That simple act offers peace and positivity, calm and contemplation.
It lets your spirits soar and leave your stress behind. It opens the mind to possibility and frees you from confinement. It offers hope and beauty, awe and inspiration.
That’s a Sky High I can get down with.
Looking up can lift you up — on a March day or any day.
TOP PHOTO: “Simpsons Clouds” over Ganoga Lake, Pennsylvania. BELOW: It’s going to be a very good day at Cape Porpoise Harbor in Maine. BOTTOM (1): The expanse of clouds offers awe and inspiration on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. BOTTOM (2): Mackerel clouds, blue sky and a bright kite on a Cape Cod beach.
