Look Up Here

This news just in: honestly? Lots of things are terrible. The science isn’t good. The politics is awful. Technology won’t save us. The wrong people are paid too much. Your life isn’t perfect. Nobody’s is. Why do we do it? Why do we hope for the best?

I’ll tell you why. This is a Public Service Announcement.

Because the little moments on the way to the other moments can be delicate and poignant and funny as hell.

Because a shadow on a leaf can blink slightly so as to make you squint and can become, absurdly, a butterfly, folding itself into your ordinary day like being a butterfly isn’t the most bonkers thing in the world.

Because someone wrote “Look Up Here” on a bridge over the freeway.

Because when people who stutter are taught to sing, they don’t stutter so much.

Because old people, when holding babies, have firm and gentle hands.

Because endorphins exist.

Because sometimes, in the middle of someone you love saying or doing something banal like selecting cereal from a supermarket shelf while discussing the pros and cons of particular electricity providers, a wave of affection can rise up in you like the tide and resettle by the end of their sentence as an amused smile prompting them to stop what they’re doing and ask “what?” 

Because the other day I walked past a brick wall and high up on the top of it - way higher than any human could reach without a ladder - was a pear with a face carved into it wearing a jaunty piece-of-string hat from its stem, smiling down at me, congratulating me on having looked up.

Because someone invented the grand piano.

Because the world over, regardless of the languages we speak or the currency in which we trade or the wars we fight, there is a universal way to write and read music.

Because the person we are meeting right now, shaking their hand and wondering if we can remember their name, could be the friend in the photograph with us, a year from now, two years, ten years, smiling into each other’s faces while someone else (a waiter? A relative? Someone else we don’t yet know?) takes a photograph of two people who have taken the time to know each other well.

Because orange light in a distant house will always seem friendly.

Because sometimes, when someone says something you have thought but never quite uttered, you can be surprised by the delight of recognition - a shock and a relief - and there is something about that which makes a moment intimate and generous at the same time. 

Because I live near a high school and the other day I watched as a boy with a camera trotted ahead of his friends, who were walking, steering their pushbikes by their seats, their jumpers slung over the handlebars, and he loped backwards, snapping shots of them, a half smile on his face. If they noticed, they didn’t break their stride, didn’t stop the conversation, which was animated but relaxed, tired and friendly. When they stopped at the lights, the photographer leaned on the pedestrian button with his hip and flicked through the shots with his thumb. A tall shambles of a boy slipped out of the friend gang and put his chin on the photographer’s shoulder. They smiled together at the photos, wordlessly, then looked up at their friends, then looked at each other, and grinned, like they’d had a whole conversation. Didn’t say a word. When the pedestrian light went green, the whole gang flung themselves across the road in a little cluster and reorganised into different pairs as they headed away down the street. The photographer put his lens cap on and listened while a girl with a messy ponytail told him something using her hands that made him laugh with his whole body. The shambles was off up the front. Off they went, one of them carrying a collection of recorded images of his friends, preserved forever. How lovely. My favourite moment, though, remained, at least photographically, unrecorded. 

Because parrots are ridiculous and amazing.

Because whatever else is going on, sitting by a fire with your socks on is good for you in some deep rooted way that science will probably never understand.

Because a home-made cake with icing on it just looks superb.

Because of all those things and because of other things too. Enjoy them. They’re everywhere. This has been a Public Service Announcement. 

An edited version of this column appears once a fortnight in The Big Issue. Support The Big Issue. They really are tops.