I think it would alarm me if I actually knew how much time I spend with my head down, watching the road ahead of me. On walks, I barely see the sky. The trees are shadows in my periphery. If birds are singing, I don't hear them through the whirlwind of thoughts in my head.
The benefit of keeping your head down is focus. Your eyes are on the road ahead—on the prize, if you would, on where you want to go. You're watching your feet—choosing the best steps forward, avoiding any pitfalls, making the most informed next steps. You're not distracted by the things that other people stop to see; if God wants to put a blessing in your path, He can put it right in front of you, right?
Maybe not.
Maybe He puts the best blessings just outside of the range of our tunnel vision.
If we allow ourselves to think this way—to fix our eyes on the daily grind until our great adventure in Christ fades into the backdrop—we can accomplish great things at an even greater cost. We might cross off every item on our to-do list, achieve our every career goal, win that prize we've been chasing . . . and miss out on everything that really matters. The blessings, the learning experiences, the spiritual growth, the intimacy with God, the joy, the peace, the gratitude.
So much of life is about perspective. When things start to feel overwhelming, exhausting, or mundane, we tend to put our noses even closer to the grindstone, working harder but complaining more—and why wouldn't we? That grindstone is all we can see.
Which is why we need to change our points of view. Take a step back. Keep working, but look at the grindstone in the greater context of your life, not as the centre of life itself. God has placed you here, with this exact task, job, challenge, or struggle, for a purpose. He has not abandoned you. Look at the sunshine, the wind in the trees, all the beauty and blessings with which the Lord has adorned your life and your work, if you just keep your head up long enough to see that there is so much to be thankful for.
Even the daily grind can become a source of joy when seen against that backdrop of blessings.
This is so true! It's really true on the one hand that people need to focus more; to look more right in front of them withOUT looking around so much. The kind of looking around that causes worry about what other people are doing/saying/whatever, rather than what you should be doing yourself. In that respect, looking down and straight ahead is so important.
But this point it also important. Both are necessary.