Good afternoon to everyone, I hope you are very well.
Yesterday, while I was walking my dog, something caught me completely off guard. A spectacular rainbow appeared in the sky, almost forming a full circle above me. I could barely look at it because I was not wearing sunglasses, but at the same time I did not want to look away. There was something about that moment that gently interrupted the mental noise I had been carrying throughout the day.
When looking up changes something inside
When I take my dog out, I am usually tired. Like many of us, I move through the day accumulating tasks, thoughts, and that subtle background rumination that never seems to fully switch off. But when I look at the sky, even for a few seconds, something shifts inside me. Not in a dramatic way, and not instantly, but enough to notice.
It is as if the mind briefly remembers scale.
Stephen Hawking once said, “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.” That phrase has followed me many times, especially in moments when everything feels a bit too heavy or repetitive. Because when you really stop and look up — whether the sky is cloudy, snowy, or completely clear — you cannot help but feel how small our daily loops are compared to the vastness above us.
Interestingly, this reaction is not only emotional. From a neuroscience perspective, experiences of awe — like observing a vast sky, the ocean, or even a full rainbow — have been shown to quiet activity in the brain’s default mode network. This network is strongly associated with rumination and repetitive self-focused thinking. In simple terms, when we perceive something bigger than ourselves, the brain temporarily reduces its obsessive inward looping.
Sometimes the nervous system just needs perspective.
The quiet strength of adaptation
Thinking about the sky often brings Stephen Hawking to my mind for another reason. Here was a man with an almost unimaginable physical limitation due to ALS, a condition that progressively left him paralyzed. And yet, his intellectual work did not stop. He continued exploring the universe, developing theories about black holes, and introducing what we now know as Hawking radiation.
What moves me most is not only the brilliance, but the endurance behind it.
Because it reminds us of something the human body and brain demonstrate again and again: we are far more adaptable than we think. Neuroplasticity research has shown that the brain can reorganize itself even under highly constrained conditions. The nervous system compensates, reroutes, and adjusts in ways that often surprise us.
This idea has been very present in my own life.
For a long time, my biggest struggle has not been the big dramatic moments, but the daily friction with what is. That subtle internal resistance that appears when reality does not match what I would prefer. It is easy to understand acceptance in theory. It is much harder to practice it when the body is tense and the mind wants immediate answers.
Learning to pause instead of forcing meaning
Einstein is often associated with the idea that coincidence may simply reflect patterns we do not yet understand. Whether one interprets that philosophically or scientifically, modern complexity science does show that many systems that look chaotic on the surface actually follow deeper forms of order.
Remembering this has helped me change one small habit.
Now, when something happens that I immediately label as negative, I try to create a very small pause. Not to deny what I feel, and not to pretend I like it, but to stop the automatic push to understand everything immediately.
I usually tell myself something simple: I do not like this, I see it clearly, but I do not need to solve it right now.
This matters more than it seems. Neuroscience shows that when we are emotionally activated, the limbic system can temporarily reduce the efficiency of the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for clear reasoning and perspective-taking. In other words, the more activated we are, the harder it is to think clearly. Sometimes giving the system time to settle is not avoidance — it is regulation.
So I let things sit more often than I used to.
Not perfectly. Not every time. But more than before.
This takes almost daily practice. There are still many moments when I notice that familiar internal tightening, the sign that I am again pushing too hard against reality. And when I notice, I begin again. Quietly. Without guilt. As many times as necessary.
Because if something has become clearer over time, it is this: real change rarely comes from one big breakthrough moment. More often, it comes from these small, repeated returns to awareness.
And sometimes, the first step back to that awareness…
is simply remembering to look up.