Month: April 2025

The Next Frontier

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the moon.

Moments later, the American astronaut turned on his radio and made an eleven-word address.

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Back on earth, my father was watching all of this from a TV set. He was days away from his 9th birthday. And he was transfixed.

The next frontier had been reached. For the first time, a human had left footprints somewhere beyond this planet. Life had fundamentally changed.

This sense of wonder has remained with my father for decades.

While he didn’t seek to become an astronaut himself, my father has remained amazed by the night sky. As an adult, he traveled to the upper reaches of Sweden to view the northern lights. And when the signature frontiers of my generation – wireless Internet and the smartphone – were released, my father was one of the earliest adopters of each.

I was a teenager when those technological advances took hold. I should have been as eager as my father to traverse the next frontier.

But I wasn’t.

I had little trust of wireless connections, preferring the familiarity of the Ethernet cords that had sustained my browsing habits for years. And I saw little point for a smartphone when I my flip phone fit neatly in my pocket.

It was clear that my next frontier would not match my father’s.

In 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out on a grand expedition.

The fledgling United States had just purchased nearly a million square miles of land from the French. But neither party had set foot in much of it. So, the U.S. government commissioned Lewis and Clark’s expedition to learn more about what it had purchased.

The men convened a traveling party, which headed up the Missouri River from its mouth to its headwaters. Then the group crossed through the mountains of present-day Montana and Idaho before following the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. After a winter on what’s presently the Oregon coast, Lewis and Clark returned east to report their findings to the government.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition quickly became the stuff of legend. At the time of the journey, Kentucky and Ohio were considered the American frontier. But Lewis and Clark proved that the next frontier — a vaster, more stunning stretch of land — was out there for the claiming. And in the ensuing decades, thousands of pioneers set out to do just that.

Soon enough, settlers dotted the land from coast to coast. Farms, ranches, roads, and towns filled the wilderness. The frontier became the mainstream.

And once it did, we set our collective sights on frontiers elsewhere. First to territories in the middle of the ocean or up by the Arctic Circle. Then to the moon and stars. And then finally to the wonders of technology.

Putting a stake in the ground became the American ethos. And Lewis and Clark made it all possible.

Still, there’s an alternative explanation for the expedition that started it all. Perhaps Lewis and Clark were not visionary. Maybe they were just beneficiaries of good fortune.

You see, this expedition was not exactly a prudent one. A group of 40 people blindly headed off into a wilderness fraught with untold dangers.

Unpredictable weather, wild animals, and legions of native tribes dotted the land they were traversing. There was no way to fully anticipate encounters with any of them, and there was no way to tell when those encounters might lead to death.

Incredibly, Lewis and Clark only lost one member of their party over the course of the expedition – and that loss was caused by a medical emergency. But it’s nearly impossible to chalk the low casualty account up to anything but luck.

This point has resonated with me ever since I learned about the Lewis and Clark expedition in school. While others are captivated by the new horizons the quest unlocked, I find myself wondering what could have gone wrong along the way.

Risk reduction, you see, is my preferred frontier. Much like an insurance advisor, I’m passionate about reducing as many bad outcomes as possible.

I’m the one looking for a handrail at the vista point. I’m the one who buckles my seat belt as I readjust my SUV in a parking spot. I’m the one who obsesses over my posture as the plane takes off and lands.

So no, I wouldn’t be cut out for a trek through the wilderness. Or a trip to the moon.

I wouldn’t be keen on connecting to an early-stage Wi-Fi signal. Or purchasing the first few models of the iPhone.

From where I sit, it just wouldn’t be sensible.

Yet, there are still frontiers I yearn to explore.

They’re just on a different dimension.

Do you drink a lot of soda?

The comment from my dental hygienist seemed innocuous enough. I nodded affirmatively.

I can tell, she replied. It might be having an impact on your teeth.

My mind immediately went to the worst-case scenarios. Were a host of cavity fillings in my future? Root canals? Implants?

I was determined to avoid these fates. So, drastic changes were needed.

I’d given up most fast food a year earlier and suffered no ill effects. Maybe I could do the same with beverages.

So, I cut bait with all sugary drinks. I said goodbye to Dr Pepper and sweet tea. I started taking my coffee black and turning down offers for lemonade.

And I felt the difference almost immediately.

I dropped 10 pounds in a matter of weeks. I was no longer feeling bloated or jittery. And the dental hygienist stopped giving me grief.

Risk reduction was transforming my life.

I repeated the trick a few years later. One day in early January, I gave up alcohol for good.

At the time, I was in business school – an environment with its share of boozy social functions. I knew that flipping the switch would be difficult in this season of life. And that abstaining could even be costly to my post-graduation prospects.

But I remembered the effect the sugary drink ban had on my health. Wouldn’t an alcohol ban also work wonders?

It has. And I remain sober to this day.

These cutbacks have defined my personal frontier. Removing McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and Jack Daniels from my life has transformed my body and detoxed my mind. Although I’m making my world of indulgences smaller, I’m truly better for the changes.

And yet, I’m left with a question each time I make a cutback. What’s my next frontier?

Until recently, it was caffeine. Even without soda in my arsenal, I still spent many mornings hopped up on black coffee or iced tea. But I’ve succeeded in kicking that habit as well.

So, now what? Do I eliminate sweets? Swearing? Something else?

I’m running out of vices to rid myself of. And that’s problematic.

It seems that frontiers are not infinite. Whether we’re expanding our horizons or reducing our holdings, there’s only so far to go.

I suppose I’ll need to make peace with that. Someday, when I’ve rid myself of the cupcakes and the dirty words, I’ll need to find acceptance with where I am. Just as others did after taming the wilderness, walking on the moon, or unveiling the iPhone.

Perhaps this represents our next frontier. Maybe our destiny is to be where our feet are, once we’re we done looking at what’s outward and inward.

I welcome this exploration – in a bit.

I have a few more vices to knock out first.

Outside Noise

A man rides up to the front lines of a makeshift army.

His hair is long. Half his face is painted blue. And he’s dripping with confidence.

As he parades back and forth upon his horse, he addresses the masses before him.

Sons of Scotland. I am William Wallace.

The troops are nonplussed.

William Wallace is seven feet tall! one calls out.

Wallace takes it all in stride.

Yes, I’ve heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if he were here, he’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse.

The troops chuckle. But Wallace quickly assures them that he is indeed William Wallace. And he reminds them why they have assembled on the battlefield. He ends his remarks with a warning to the English opponents across the battlefield.

They may take our lives. But they will never take our freedom!

It’s the signature scene from the movie Braveheart, and one of the great battle speeches of all time.

But it only occurs thanks to a dose of self-awareness.

Wallace hears the skepticism as he introduces himself. And he plays along with it to earn their trust.

It’s a master class in persuasion. One that’s as needed in the real world as it is on the silver screen.

We don’t listen to the outside noise.

This type of line is seemingly everywhere in the sporting universe.

Ask a coach or a player about what others are saying about their chances, and they’ll shrug it off. Fans, media pundits, and oddsmakers can speak all they want. But they ain’t hearing any of it.

Belief within the locker room is all that matters to these players and coaches. So long as that exists, the sky is the limit.

It’s a tidy theory, one tailor made for an environment dictated by scheduled competitions. Athletes have the freedom to shut out the world and just go play.

But for the rest of us? It’s not so easy.

We don’t have the luxury of built-in trust. We can’t ignore the narrative that surrounds us.

Much like William Wallace, we must pander to the crowd to get what we want out of life.

And that can get complicated.

My high school didn’t have a uniform policy.

Teenagers were allowed to wear whatever they wanted, provided it wasn’t profane or overly revealing.

Many of my classmates took advantage of this freedom to sport the latest from Abercrombie & Fitch or American Eagle. But I went a different route.

Most days, I’d show up to class in an oversized football or basketball jersey. My close-cropped hair was hidden under a backwards baseball hat. It was a set of attire unbecoming of a school setting. But it was my look.

Surely, I got some sideways stares in the hallways. And my classmates likely talked about me behind my back.

But I didn’t care enough to pay attention to any of it.

What did it matter what others thought? I had a right to live my life the way I saw fit. The outside noise hardly mattered.

But fast forward five years, and my viewpoint was quite different.

I was in my last semester of college. And I was spending my evenings applying for jobs across the southern tier of the country.

Bakersfield, California. Waco, Texas. Macon, Georgia. And so on.

I had no connections to Bakersfield, Waco, or Macon. I just knew that TV stations in those cities were looking for a news producer. A role I’d spent four years studying to step into.

While I did land phone interviews with some of those stations, none of them offered me a job.

So, I walked across the stage at graduation and into unemployment. I moved back in with my parents. And I sank into a pit of despair.

I still believed in myself. But I was starting to realize that wasn’t enough.

If I hoped to land a job, someone else would need to believe in me. They’d need to look at my resume, listen to my interview responses, and decide I was worthy of their trust.

I needed this outcome to financially sustain myself, to validate my studies, and succeed in adulthood.

The outside noise meant everything. It guarded the door to opportunity. It blazed the path to my future. It was inevitable.

So, I cleaned up my act.

I ditched my college wardrobe of t-shirts and shorts in favor of business casual attire. (I’d long since graduated from jerseys and baseball hats.) I woke up earlier each morning and forced myself to be more productive each day. I started doing mock interviews, considering my answers from the interviewer’s point of view.

And shortly thereafter, I landed my first job.

Be your authentic self.

This advice was everywhere early in my professional career.

Individualism was having a moment. Instead fitting in, people were actively trying to fit out.

I admired the pluck of this movement. But I was hesitant to play along.

For I knew the situation I was in. I was 2,000 miles from my family, providing the nightly news to a metro area of 250,000 people.

I’d earned the trust of my boss to do my job. I’d earned the trust of local TV viewers to serve the community. And I’d earned the trust of friends I’d made since I’d arrived in town.

But I knew that trust could easily be broken.

If I paid no heed to the outside noise, I might have found myself with no job, no friends, and no spot in the community. I would have been stranded on the high plains with nowhere to turn.

What others thought of me was existentially important. So, I paid attention to those perceptions. And I did my best to influence them.

This process has continued throughout my adult life. As I’ve moved to a new city, adopted a new career, went back to school, and picked up new hobbies, I’ve continued to pay attention to the outside noise.

Often, this has led to frustration. I’ve occasionally seen my goals thwarted by external skepticism. And more than once, doors have slammed in my face as a result.

Still, tuning into the feedback has helped me move forward. Instead of rebelling against adverse perceptions, I can iterate off them. And in doing so, I can increase my chances of getting the next opportunity — all while remaining true to who I am.

If trust is a bridge to opportunity, I’m building the pilings and approaches to that bridge from my side of the divide. And I’m making it easier for the other party to follow suit.

But all this is only possible because I recognize that the divide exists. And because I can see the merit in its inevitability.

We all can find value in this approach. We all would be better served acting like William Wallace in front of his troops than an athlete dismissing the media members in the locker room.

So, let’s get to it.

The outside noise matters. Use it well.

On Adequacy

The image speaks volumes.

I’m standing on a racing podium, displaying my silver medal. Beside me are the gold and bronze medalists. We all look happy, but my smile is the most radiant.

I’d headed to the starting line of this race with a clear objective. I wanted to traverse the 10-kilometer — or 6.2 mile — distance in under 40 minutes.

It was an audacious goal, one that required equal parts speed and endurance. The fact that the race was occurring on hot summer morning — and that I’d been battling an injury in the week prior — only made this mark more difficult to attain.

But against all odds, I’d persevered. I started out the race briskly, settled into a steady pace, and survived the final couple miles.

As I crossed the finish line, the clock read 39:54. I’d set a personal best for this distance.

Mission accomplished. Well, sort of.

You see, my finishing time wasn’t atop the leaderboard on this day. In fact, I wasn’t even in the top 10 of all racers. And when it came to my division — the subset of male racers who were around my age — my performance was only second best.

That’s why I was holding a silver medal on the podium, rather than a gold one or a winner’s plaque. I’d earned those in other races — either for overall performance or standing in my division. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for similar accolades this time.

But I wasn’t going to let my standing impact my mood. I’d done my best on this day, and I’d proved my adequacy in the wake of some tough competition.

I had everything to smile about.

It’s good enough for government work.

I was dumbfounded when one of my high school teachers stated this to my class.

The solution he’d posited on the whiteboard was not quite complete. It was maybe 90% to the point of where it should be.

Why call it a day there? And why smear the government like this?

Clearly, there was much for me to learn about the ways of the world. And I needed to rid my mind of its utopian perceptions.

In the classroom, achievement was graded on an A to F scale. Expectations were clearly defined, and it was my responsibility to attain them.

If I paid attention, completed assignments, and studied diligently, I’d find the rewards of the winner’s circle. Sparkling grades, the praise of my teachers, a chance to continue my studies at a prestigious university — they were all possible if I just did the work.

Adequacy was everything in this environment.

But in the world outside the classroom windows, things were far murkier. There was no framework of expectations. There was only a bar to clear — one that could be set higher or lower at will.

The government, in my teacher’s telling, set that bar lower. There was too much bureaucracy in play to demand a culture of excellence.

But other corners of society were more akin to an Olympic high jumping competition. People could set the bar higher and higher, until they were leaping halfway to the moon.

The context was established by the pace setters, the winners, the high-fliers. Doing an adequate job in this environment would earn you precisely nothing.

It was a hard lesson to take in. In fact, I’m still wrestling with it today.

I tried so hard and got so far. But in the end, it doesn’t even matter.

That refrain is the centerpiece of Linkin Park’s hit song In The End – which was playing seemingly everywhere during my teenage years.

I found those lines needlessly dark and brooding back then. After all, this was the land of opportunity, and my future was bright. Why should I think my hard work would go for naught?

But now, I feel a kinship with them.

You see, I’ve attained quite a bit in my adult life. I’ve embarked on a career, left it, and built another one. I’ve increased my net worth, grown my social circle, and expanded my knowledge base.

I’ve shown adequacy at every turn. And I’ve taken every opportunity to demonstrate my competence.

But what has it gotten me?

Far less than I’d anticipated.

According to my teenage logic, I should have been well-established by now. I should have already reached a higher standing in my professional field, with my own piece of land to call home, and enough in the bank account to be perpetually comfortable.

But instead, I’m hearing Linkin Park in my head, over and over.

Some of this has to do with the era I’ve come of age in. Economic turmoil, a pandemic, and rapid technological innovation have scrambled the deck more than ever before.

But I believe a more specific shift is at play. One that rejects adequacy in favor of exceptionalism.

Now, to be clear, the allure of the exceptional has always been there. But with the world more interconnected than ever before, it’s now easier to find unicorns. And the risks of settling for anything less are dauntingly steep.

This presents quite the problem for the adequate.

Indeed, in every corner of my life, I feel like I’m in a silent auction with moon jumpers. I can put in my best effort and prove my adequacy. But there will inevitably be someone with more means, more accolades, and more abilities to seize that which I am striving for. Someone I cannot see or size up. Someone I will only hear of after the fact.

There is no silver medal for me to claim. There is nothing for me to do.

There is only me standing on the podium in the wind. And the smile on my face is gone.

I sat on an upholstered chair in a wood-paneled office next to the school gym. The baseball coach sat across the table from me.

He got straight to the point.

I’m sorry. You didn’t make the team.

Those seven words stung, no doubt. I’d yearned to be a pro baseball player for years. Now, I wasn’t even going to have the chance to suit up for my sophomore year of high school.

But I can’t say I was all that surprised.

I’d done a few good things the prior season, and I’d given my best during tryouts. But others had attained more. They deserved a spot on the team more than I did.

I walked out of the room, hearing the door close behind me. And I started to consider which doors ahead might open for me.

I had good grades in school, and I knew I could write. Plus, I liked watching movies. Maybe I could be a screenwriter.

I followed this thread all the way into my first year of college. But after taking a few film classes there, I discovered that television was more up my alley. So, I switched my major to Broadcast Journalism and parlayed that into a job as a TV news producer.

Adequacy hadn’t helped me live out my baseball dreams. But it opened other avenues for me to move forward into self-sufficiency.

Now, all these years later, I’m unsure where to turn. The path forward to the next era of my life seems to be reserved for the unicorns, the invisible exceptionalists. I have no guidance on what’s needed to reach their level. And I have no alternative avenues to get me to my destination.

Adequacy has led me to a dead end. And I’m stuck in the cul-de-sac.

There seems to be no simple path out of this morass. But I won’t give up.

I’ll keep trying my best, giving my all, and proving my adequacy at every turn.

Hopefully someday that will be enough to get me through.

The Curse of The Strongman

He had thick eyebrows and a thicker mustache.

He dressed in the fashion of the day. A suit. A hat. An overcoat. A pistol.

His name was Seth Bullock, and he was a prominent western sheriff.

Bullock might not have held the notoriety of Wyatt Earp or Pat Garrett. But he was just as effective a lawman as those two – if not more. Operating with steely resolve, Bullock cleaned up a county in Montana. Then he repeated the trick in the Dakota Territory.

Bullock’s exploits helped tame the northern frontier. They also drew the acclaim of future President Theodore Roosevelt, who would go on to appoint Bullock as a United States Marshal.

And yet, despite Bullock’s strong and steady hand, there’s little recognition of him in the region today. It’s Roosevelt — not Bullock — whose face is chiseled into a mountain in South Dakota, and whose name is on a national park in North Dakota.

Bullock had the pedigree of a strongman. But it turns out that title only goes so far.

Back when I was in middle school, I leaned about a particular term in history class.

Tariffs.

I hadn’t seen this word in my day-to-day life. And for good reason.

Tariffs, I discovered, were taxes on goods shipped across national borders in the 18th century. American colonists took exception to the practice back then, and this backlash helped pave to the road to America’s independence.

I internalized this information, used it to ace my class exam, and promptly filed it away in the furthest recesses of my mind.

Tariffs hadn’t been relevant in 225 years. I wouldn’t need to worry about them anymore.

Boy, was I wrong.

You see, a generation after I turned in my history exam, a new president took the helm in America. Well, more accurately, a returning president — one who had occupied the Oval Office four years prior.

This president railed against weak leadership while campaigning for his old job. He all but pledged to be a strongman if elected back to the role. And voters accepted the pledge, paving his road back to the White House.

Once back in power, the president took every opportunity to rule with an iron fist. He started deporting migrants, slashing the government workforce, and systematically removing his opponents from positions of influence.

It was all a bit jarring, but hardly unpredictable. This is what a strongman does.

But his next move would prove the most disruptive. The president brought back tariffs, imposing them on nearly every other country on the planet.

The reasoning for this move was straightforward —to the president, at least. America had been roiled by skyrocketing inflation in recent years. American industry had been on the decline, and trade deficits with other countries had widened.

Why not solve all these problems with one fell swoop? Make global trade too expensive to be practical. And bring supply chains — and their associated jobs — back within American borders.

Unemployment would plummet as industrial jobs returned within our borders. And with those goods being made closer to home, prices would drop as well.

The stock market would rally, businesses would remain profitable, and families would bask in the prosperity of a rejuvenated economy. The strongman leader would be the hero, the savior, the genius behind it all.

This was the theory the president had as he announced the tariffs. But things played out much differently.

Markets tanked within hours of the announcement, wiping out billions of dollars in value. Businesses raised alarm about rapid onshoring of operations — a process that normally takes years to complete. Financial analysts warned of rising prices, and even the risk of a recession.

The president may have embodied the strongman persona with aplomb before. But now, he appeared to have overplayed his hand.

It was a sordid outcome. But hardly an unprecedented one.

The annals of history are filled with strongman leaders.

The legacies of these leaders vary widely. Some built empires through military might, for instance. Others committed mass genocide and related atrocities.

But even with these varying outcomes, two threads seem to tie this archetype together. Strongman leaders are effective at consolidating power and ineffective at managing an economy.

That second part of the equation might not seem intuitive. But it should be.

Economics, you see, represents the systematic allocation of scarce resources. The entire practice is built on the premise that there’s not enough to go around, and participants must consider trade-offs.

Just about every economic concept — from Invisible Hand to specialization to supply chains — stems from the entrenched reality of these trade-offs. Capitalism is essentially built on it.

But cooperative systems like these crumble in the face of the strongman ethos. There is no room for the strongman to share control or delegate influence. Giving an inch means the gig is up.

So, strongmen often choose power over prosperity. Or they silence the voices of reason in favor of chasing economic fantasies.

The latter appears to be happening in America. Tariffs are just the vehicle to get the nation to that outcome.

This is the curse of the strongman. And we’re mired in it.

Guilt by association.

Such a concept is prevalent in America.

If we give a friend a ride to the bank, and the friend robs that bank, there’s a good chance we’ll be viewed as complicit in the crime.

This might seem unfair. We didn’t necessarily know what our friend would do once inside those bank doors.

But we should have.

The bank robber was our friend, after all. We’ve conversed with them, immersed ourselves in their personality, and come to recognize what they were capable of.

The same principle holds true when it comes to our leaders — particularly those of the strongman variety. We might not be directly culpable for their actions. But we still carry the stain of association.

We do so because we lean into one illusion, in particular. That an iron fist can yield widespread economic prosperity.

This is simply not possible, for the reasons already discussed. And there are plenty of real-world examples of the illusion failing. Examples we’ve seen in the news, or learned about in school, or just heard about through our social circles.

We know better. And yet, we chase after misguided fantasies anyway.

It’s time to wake up.

There is an explanation as to why Seth Bullock’s name no longer graces much of the northern tier.

It centers on a couple of elections that took place in the 1870s in what is now Lawrence County, South Dakota.

Bullock had served as sheriff in the county. But he was an appointed sheriff who had been named to his position by the Dakota territory’s governor.

As the county legitimized, elections were held for the sheriff’s position. Bullock ran for his post, but he did not win it. He was forced to cede his duties.

Bullock tried again in the following year’s election. But once again, the voters cast his aspirations aside.

Even at the apex of his exploits, Bullock’s legacy was getting sidelined.

It’s hard to know exactly what led to these election losses. But it’s possible that the citizens of Lawrence County saw the limits of strongman rule.

Sure, Bullock could cut down on the saloon fights and the shootouts in the street. But the frontier region was on the precipice of a boom. Could Bullock really help deliver the prosperity residents were seeking?

It appeared not.

Indeed, Bullock’s exploits had pitted him against some local business owners — who prospered in trade and social connections across the county, but who also engaged in some illicit activities. Voters seemed to favor the future promised by these leaders to the strongman keeping them safe.

Perhaps we can take something from our ancestors’ example. Perhaps we can get less swept up in the fantasy of rhetoric. And perhaps we can apply more logic when a strongman makes their pitch of prosperity to us.

This might not sooth the acid reflux of our current tariffed economy. But it could keep some future heartburn at bay.

And that matters.

Looking Up

My father placed a blanket on the grass. As we parked ourselves on it, he encouraged me to look up at the night sky.

I glanced upwards. It didn’t look like much to me at first.

But then my father started pointing at the little specks illuminating the darkness.

See that? It’s Orion’s belt. And over there is the big dipper.

I stared on, struggling to see the patterns in the stars. I was only four years old, more prone to aimless daydreaming than structured visualization.

Yet, I still recognized how special this moment was. I idolized my father, but I didn’t get to spend as much time as I wanted to with him.

Now, here we were. Our backs to the ground, our eyes fixed on the vastness of space. It was quiet. It was comfortable. It was mesmerizing.

And I never wanted to stop looking up.

A few years later, I was in the middle of a school day when my mother showed up to sign me out of class.

She explained that my father had gotten injured on his way to work. He had slipped on some ice and fractured a couple vertebrae in his back during the ensuing fall.

My mother had scooped me from school early so that we could help look after him.

My father would ultimately be OK. But through his arduous recovery, my father kept reminiscing on one moment from his injury.

As he lay prone on the sidewalk, my father remembered looking up. He saw the pale blue of the morning sky. He saw the tops of the tree branches. He saw a few rogue birds who hadn’t migrated south for the winter.

It was as if my father was back staring up at the stars again. Indeed, the world around him faded away in that moment. My father felt no pain and sensed no panic.

He was at peace. And that sense of peace helped carry him through.

Looking up will do that.

Roughly a decade after all this, I went to Italy on a family vacation. A few days into the trip, I found myself inside the Sistine Chapel.

I was a teenager by now, full of confidence and oblivious to the lessons of my past. So, I was equal parts annoyed and perplexed when I was urged to glance upwards to the frescos on the ceiling.

Why were those painted all the way up there? I asked my parents as we left the vestibule. It makes no sense.

My parents offered up an answer that I can’t recall. And we moved on through the Vatican.

These days, I realize how misguided my question was. Indeed, the placement of the art was part of what made it so special — and what continues to spark amazement to this day.

Michaelangelo defied death to paint the elaborate scenes. After all, there were no automated bucket lifts in the 16th century, only wooden scaffolds.

The artist took this risk willingly to create a masterpiece. And he dared us to cast our gaze upwards to take it in.

We’ve done so in the Sistine Chapel — for centuries.

But it has become the exception, not the rule.

I had just finished a set of sit ups at the gym when I lay back on the workout bench.

There were two more sets to go, but I needed a moment to recover.

As I lay there, feeling the burning in my abs and thighs, I studied the ceiling. The banks of recessed florescent lights. The electrical conduit covers. The flat, even surface denoting the top of the room. And the white coat of paint covering it all.

It looked so blasé, so ordinary, so sterile. And I felt a bit wrong for staring up at it.

I might wax poetic about looking up at the stars, the tree branches, or the frescos. But staring in that direction has fallen out of favor. Indeed, we’re more likely to glance horizontally at our surroundings, or hunch over to read the smartphones in our hands.

Looking up is reserved for the compromised moments. When we’re counting sheep in bed, or to recover our muscles for the next set of reps. The vertical view is but temporary, and hardly worthy of illustration. So, we don’t bother to make that view notable.

But perhaps we should.

You see, our fixation with horizontal vistas has its limits. There is a sense of awe that comes with looking toward the horizon. And there’s a sense of adventure in heading off to see what’s beyond it.

Still, the truth of the matter is that nearly every accessible corner of this planet has been explored. Someone else has been to where we’re going. Someone else has uncovered the mysteries in our midst.

Looking up has no such baggage. The law of gravity proves that few have headed to where we now stare, and we’re unlikely to head there ourselves.

It’s our imagination that must run wild when staring at the vast expanses above us. The stars, the birds, the tree branches — they all provide a launching point. The rest of the journey lies between our ears.

Of course, we can’t always be out in the open. Many times, we find ourselves with a roof over our heads.

Such structures can block our view of the vast expanses above us. But they needn’t stymie our imaginations as well.

Michaelangelo was onto something when he wandered onto that scaffold with his paintbrush. He recognized that a ceiling is more than a protective edifice. It can be a canvas to what lies beyond — if we care to provide the inspiration.

It’s time that we follow his lead. That we view the act of looking up as more than a novelty case or a last resort. And that we prime ourselves to make such a view worth our while —regardless of where we take it in.

Looking up can yield some powerful perceptions. It’s time that we unlock them.