Last week, during one of our morning family fireside chats, I asked the question, What’s a fond memory from your childhood? My youngest daughter chimed in first. She recalled a time when she was much younger and wasn’t feeling well. She was sad about something. I asked her the type of question only a parent who still believes in magic might ask…
“Do you want to leave this planet?”
She said yes, so I proceeded tolifted her up, turned her upside down, planted her little feet on the ceiling, and walked her across, one step at a time. When I asked if she was ready to return to Earth, she said yes again and just like that, she felt better. The truth is, I didn’t remember that specific incident at all. But I do know that I’ve walked every one of my children, nieces, and nephews across some available ceiling at one time or another. Kitchen ceilings. Living room ceilings. Hallway ceilings. Bedroom ceilings. Wherever gravity could be temporarily renegotiated.
That parent-child exchange wasn’t merely about play alone. It was about perspective. Dr. Wayne Dyer use to say, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at, change.” More often than not, that change makes the change. Sometimes the world feels unbearable not because it is, but because we’re seeing it from the same angle over and over again. Same floor. Same ceiling. Same weight. Same worries pressing down. A small shift, just enough to invert the view, can remind us that what feels permanent might only be positional. When you’re upside down, the rules change. The ceiling becomes a road. The weight in your chest loosens. You’re no longer stuck, you’re traveling. That’s what my daughter remembered. Not sickness. Not sadness but motion, care, imagination at work, and much needed relief.
Perhaps that’s the quiet calling of this season. We’re living in a time when many people are carrying more than they can articulate. Grief without language. Fear without clear edges. Responsibilities stacked so high they feel endless. Some are so weighed down they’re not just asking to leave the planet, they are checking out in not so good ways. Ways that can be avoided if we dare to care beyond a thought.
What if our task right now isn’t to fix everything? What if it’s simply to help one another change altitude? To lift someone gently. To offer a momentary escape, not necessarily from reality, but from its heaviness. To say, “Let me help you with this for a second. Let me show you another way to see it.” You don’t need rockets for that. Just presence, care, and the willingness to look a little silly while carrying someone upside down through a hard moment. A change in perspective doesn’t erase pain but it can loosen its grip. Sometimes, that’s enough to help someone feel better. It can be just enough to help them return to Earth a little more ready to move forward. That’s interplanetary work; real space travel that acknowledges the space between us as connection. No doubt, we could all use a little more of that right now.
Notes of A Native Son 