Keep Your Head Up

'I spoke to God today.

He was Black man with a bad knee and the names of his four children tattooed on his right arm. He interrupted my self-care routine of calmly sitting on the rocks by the water as music plays through my headphones and the events of the week and next week and the week prior and the rest of my life filter violently through my anxiety.

“Are you ok man?” he said when I finally brought down my headphones. “Look at you” he continued “your face all red” as I laughed and assured him that everything was ok.

“I see you out here with your head down. I know man. I don’t know what’s goin’ on and I don’t gotta know. You just keep your motherfuckin’ head up. You hear me? No matter what’s goin’ on you keep your motherfuckin’ head up. Never let ‘em see you put it down. You understand me? Keep that motherfuckin’ head up.”

As he hobbled away across the rocks I kept my motherfuckin’ head up and I smiled more genuinely than I had all day. Uncertain if he had done more for my posture or my mental health. The water calm out toward the horizon, the birds dancing in the sky, I listened to the music as his words played over and over in my head.

"Keep your motherfuckin’ head up."

Amen.'

As a therapist myself, it's easy to find a multitude of coping skills for my own anxiety, worries, grief, anger, whatever might come my way. But it's also much easier for me to assume I have it all under control and ignore my feelings. I don't know exactly what that kind man saw in me when he looked out at the rocks by the lake. Was it my poor posture as I sat and craned my neck downward toward the spiders crawling away from the coming waves? Or was it obvious from my positioning that the year and more without closeness is starting to get to me?

I felt him coming before I saw or heard anything. With my headphones on and Godspeed You! Black Emperor filtering through my ear drums, I thought the world around me was forbidden my attention. But I turned and saw him climbing toward me, assuming that he just also wanted to sit and taken in the fresh, warm breeze from the lake. He made signs of trying to get my attention, so I took my headphones down to my neck and that's when he asked me if I was ok.

I really did laugh out loud, thinking that he had severely misunderstood my purpose for climbing out and sitting on these rocks. But as he spoke of keeping my head up no matter what, his four kids, and his bad knee, I couldn't help but tell him how much I appreciated him making his way out to say something to me. At first to dismiss the idea that it was necessary for me, but that it could be a helpful thing to do in the future, then to truly acknowledge what it had done for me that he risked his own safety to speak the words of God to me.

I don't invoke the name of God lightly. I'm well aware that God means different things to different people ranging from everything to nothing at all. For me, God is in the things that connect us and draw us together. It's love and friendship. It's service and giving. It's meditation and reflection. Anything that connects and draws us in, to others or to ourselves.

I was drawn in and connected on this day in a way that I had ignored. Either because the ongoing pandemic has separated me from everyone that I love and care for for so long or because it's very easy for me to pretend the distance isn't there to begin with. Maybe both. I don't know that man's name and I haven't seen him since. We didn't connect as friends or even acquaintances. We connected as smaller parts of a whole finding themselves. In connecting with this man, I connected more deeply with myself and all of humanity. With all life and the earth.

I catch myself looking down sometimes and I remind my self to keep my motherfuckin' head up. I still don't know if it's been better for my posture or my mental health, but I know it's been good. Whatever screen you may be looking at to read this right now, I invite you to keep your motherfuckin' head up. Up above the things that would bring you down. Up and focused on the things, and people, that make you feel connected and whole.