Look Up!

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Before each pitch Yankee player Nick Swisher glances skyward in a tribute to his grandmother. I remember thinking that to be odd because he's standing up there with a hundred and one things to do before the 95 MPH pitch comes at him. He's a good hitter anyway.

Swisher also never misses. It doesn't matter if he's there for ten pitches, he looks up each time.

I often think about a conversation I had with my brother Jeff one night. We were celebrating Carrie returning home from her first year of law school, and we had a few adult beverages and wandered out to the backyard to get rid of the beer.

The summer sky was filled with stars and on a clear night the black void didn't seem to be so far away.

"Look up," Jeff said. "People don't look up enough. "It's an amazing universe."

This morning I was out doing my thing and the morning sky was sort of expressive, don't you think?

I was trying to think back in time to when life didn't seem so damn complicated, and when I wasn't so concerned with the fuse that is burning down for all of us.

"Look up. It's an amazing universe."

The I-pod has been burning with song after song as I try and sort through things in my mind. It feels an awful lot like I'm going to have to write again, and that is going to take a hell of a lot of soul-searching and looking up.

It is an amazing universe.

The weight of the world doesn't always have to be on our shoulders.

Check out Swisher the next time you see him in the batter's box, and do yourself a favor from time to time:

Look up and know it ain't all on you.

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