Be your ordinary extraordinary self

In these pandemic days that we live in, sometimes I feel a surrealness to life, particularly when I am at home for a day or two then venture out and then remember these extraordinary times we live in as I walk into a store and don my face covering. These are, indeed, extraordinary times.

My musing today, then, is about our awareness of self.

To be ordinary is to be normal, “with no special or distinctive features”. It is part of the human condition then, to seek to be seen, recognised, acknowledged, to contribute more than the ordinary, to be extraordinary at some level and in some ways. However, if I seek to be extraordinary all the time, not only may ego take over, but also the sheer extraordinariness of everything may further see me lose my sense of being centred, grounded, balanced, present.

I therefore seek to strike a balance in life, consciously choosing certain elements of life to be ordinary, then relishing them. As an example, I take pleasure in a morning ritual of coffee in my favourite chair often accompanied by the presence of my neighbour’s cat sitting in his favourite morning spot a few metres away at the top of my small garden. Ordinary, and, when I choose to be present to that, extraordinary in that ordinariness, such that I can choose to sit in presence and even wonder in that repeated moment.