I love sentences that make you stop, back up, read them again, and wonder whether the author accidentally fell asleep on the keyboard. Reading these lines was one of those times.
When up looks up, up is down.
When down looks down, down is up.
I spent a ridiculous amount of time staring at those two lines. I tilted my head. I read them more slowly. I briefly considered whether turning the page upside down would help me understand them better.
And then it clicked, and I thought: oh. OH. This is the smartest thing anyone has said about perspective in fourteen words.
The author of these words is Ruth Ozeki in her book “A Tale for the Time Being”. Whether that’s what Ruth Ozeki meant is almost beside the point, but I understood it to mean that perspective matters.
What you thought was the ceiling might be the floor. Your entire map might be upside down. What you’ve been treating as a consolation prize might actually be the win.
That’s the disorienting, vertigo-inducing idea at the heart of those two lines. Which is why it takes a minute to land.
Which Direction Are You Looking?
If you’re single in a world that idolizes couplehood, you know exactly what it means to look up.
You know what it feels like to walk into a room and immediately scan for who, in your mind, is ahead of you in life. Who has the ring, the stroller, the joint Amazon account?
You know what it feels like to scroll and feel that subtle, sinking sensation that everyone else has moved on to the next stage while you’re still standing at the starting line.
From that vantage point, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve grown, healed, worked, or built. If you’re always looking up at others, you will always feel down.
And if you’re used to looking down on yourself, you will always find a way to make where you are seem less than it actually is.
This isn’t about thinking positive. It’s about realizing that the way you view your life is an angle. And angles can be changed.
The Ladder Nobody Asked For
That ladder you’re climbing in your head, that tells you where you need to be at each stage of your life? This is what society decided, and you took it as fact.
At the top: married by a certain age, kids, “established,” did everything in the right order.
In the middle: on the way, seriously dating, engaged, basically happening.
At the bottom: still single.
You could be thriving in your career, have a full social life, look great, volunteer for numerous organizations in your spare time, and still feel completely behind, because the only up your brain recognizes as valid, is what you don’t have yet.
You could be remarkable and still convince yourself you’re behind because the only achievement your brain is willing to count is marriage. No matter how much is actually there, your gaze keeps pulling upward.
And when you look up you feel down.
What Being Single Apparently Means
When down looks down, down is up.
It’s not just that you’re comparing yourself to everyone who seems ahead. It’s what you’re telling yourself being single means.
“I’m so late. I should have figured this out by now. What’s wrong with me that everyone else can do this and I can’t? If I were really worth choosing, someone would have chosen me already.”
Those thoughts start to feel like the truth, like life looked around the room, made its choices, and somehow just skipped over you.
That feeling is real. I’m not going to tell you it isn’t, but did life really skip you?
It’s easy to look back at the last five, ten years and feel like “What exactly did I accomplish? I’m still in the same place. Still single. Still waiting.”
Look at the life you built in that time, the person you are. Yes, you’re still single, but that doesn’t erase everything else that’s true about your life.
Look Straight Ahead
Changing perspective doesn’t mean pretending you’re thrilled with where you are when you’re not. It’s not self-gaslighting. It’s just a reality check.
When you stop craning your neck at the imaginary timeline above you and look at where your feet are planted, without using someone else’s life as the ruler, something shifts. The only thing making your life feel down is the map you created, where your present feels like a delay instead of a destination.
If looking up makes you feel behind, and looking down on yourself makes you feel small, what’s left?
Look straight ahead.
Stop using everyone else’s life as the lens through which you evaluate your own.
Don’t look at her timeline, at his announcement, because when you do that, you’re not actually seeing your life at all. You’re seeing a comparison. And comparisons are not reality.
Same Life, Different Angle
You spend so much time looking up at everyone else and down on yourself. How about trying something different? Quit looking at life as a vertical climb, and it will stop feeling like one. You aren’t at the bottom of anyone else’s mountain.
When up looks up, up is down.
When down looks down, down is up.
Sometimes all it takes is a different way of looking at your life to go from feeling like your life is on hold to realizing it has been moving forward all along.
You don’t control the timing.
You don’t control who says yes to you.
You don’t control how your story unfolds.
But you control the direction of your gaze.
Miriam
P.S. How long did it take you to chap?
Are you still scratching your head over this?
