Look Up At Last
How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last!
These words come from Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, lying wounded on the battlefield of Austerlitz in 1805. Moments earlier he had charged forward waving a flag, hungry for the kind of glory Napoleon seemed to embody. Struck down and staring upward, he sees only clouds moving across an endless sky and realizes his ambition for recognition suddenly seems small against what has been overhead the entire time. Tolstoy uses this scene to show how a moment of stillness can reveal what busyness and ambition had hidden in plain sight.
Reflection
Tolstoy's Prince Andrei finally saw the sky only after he stopped chasing battle and glory. What is right in front of me today that I keep missing?