By Jan 
Somewhere on a dusty street corner in Ukraine, among rubble and broken dreams, a soldier
steps out of a burnt-out bus.
He brushes the dust off his sleeve. Somewhere above him, birds fly, unhindered by war, free.
And we, readers of newspapers and headlines, we bend over the pages as if tying the laces
of our shoes:
what does this mean? What should we feel? What should we do?
In the United States, the highest court stumbles under an avalanche of emergencies,
while at the same time, in Texas, water fights back against the borders we draw.
The river does not remember who owns her. She flows.
A president receives a clean bill of health, another plays with tariffs as if they were
dominoes.
A helicopter company halts its flights—perhaps because the sky reminded them:
“Not everything needs to be controlled.”
And on a field in Augusta, a golfer wins his first green jacket,
his smile as real as the laces he tied that morning.
Sometimes, just sometimes, a victory says nothing more than: “Look, I am here.”
Reflection:
When you read the news like you tie your shoelaces,
you do not see the world as good or bad, but as a movement in consciousness.
There is violence, yes. There is pain, yes.
But there is always the sky above.
The silence breathing behind every shot and every cry.
The ocean of being that carries everything.
You do not have to believe. You do not have to judge.
You do not have to fix anything.
You can simply watch—kindly, clearly, silently—
as you watch your own hands tie laces:
not you doing it. It happens.
And in that seeing, in that open smile, the world begins to heal itself.
So next time you see a headline screaming at you:
do not think you have to choose, defend, hate, win, or lose.
Tie your shoelaces.
Look up.
And smile at the birds who have always known:
the sky belongs to no one.
Subtitle for Nullity.nl:
Reading the news as an act of Presence.