Apr 29 2007
Our Ordinary Lives
[Thursday April 26, 2007]
The cabin is darkened, my seat is reclined, I’m nestled in padding and white sheets. I’m cozy amongst half a dozen or so strangers who have settled in for the night.
I fly towards Cape Town, cocooned in a first class pod, watching “Stranger Than Fiction.”
At the very end of the movie, the narrator says something about how we view the little things in our lives as accessories: The cookies baked and eaten and the small decisions made. She says that what we think of as accessories to our lives is in fact what makes up our lives.
What a simple and beautiful thought.
Our day is a series of mostly mundane event strung together – the trip to the store, the drive to work, the Post-It notes you stick around your monitor. We think of all these things as small touches, we believe that these things aren’t our life; our life isn’t in the mundane.
Our life is the close-up shot, the thrilling coincidence, the passionate kiss, the deaths, and the births.
Our life is the arcing plot.
If we were to take away all the mundane what are we left with? A series of dramatic events that may thrill or sadden or leave us breathless.
Our lives our trips to the stores, losing our keys, cutting an onion, replacing batteries, and crossing at the green light.
What if we could no longer do any of the things that we consider mundane? No more trips to the store, no more taking out the garbage, no more picking up the kids at school no more ordinary day to day living. These acts are gone from our lives forever.
I thought about not being able to change my sheets, call my mom, and even tying my shoes.
We tend to appreciate something only after it’s gone.
Our lives are in the mundane and ordinary.
How beautiful the ordinary can be.
How beautiful our ordinary lives.