This week, one of my teachers (the stellar Stasia Savasuk whose Style School and other workshops I cannot recommend highly enough) invited us to connect to gratitude for ordinary things.
I love this prompt mostly since my theory is that “ordinary” does not exist.
Somatic training and practice has had me questioning the reality of “ordinary” for decades but two broken feet in 18 months proved it: there is no such thing as ordinary.
Now that my feet are functional again, I’m struck over and over by the delights that I once took for granted. Standing in the shower? Heaven. Moving around the kitchen putting dishes away? Glorious. Sliding two bare feet into the sheets? Orgasmic.
Seven years ago, I wrote about this very topic (read the full post here). Back then I suggested:
What we mistake for an ordinary day, is actually us paying ordinary attention to an extraordinary day.
My life is busy and full and everything feels fast. How many days do I spend glossing over, skimming through, skipping past the details so I can get everything done? Time feels like it’s going faster but maybe it just because I’m glossing, skimming and skipping past the days.
And then there’s the repetition of adult life. As kids, the world is amazing and a new teacher every year and wow, look at that bug! As adults, our lives can fall into a metronome of speed and intensity. The trance of modern life can feel paradoxically boring and stressful, dull and chaotic, purposeless and urgent. For me, especially in mid-March, everything can feel perfectly beige and ordinary.
To create an extraordinary life, pay extraordinary attention to ordinary things.
In the movie Paterson, Adam Driver plays a bus driver and poet in Paterson, New Jersey who quietly observes the wonders of the people and places of his city. The film captures the quality of not just seeing the world with interest and curiosity, but being impacted by it all.
While the character in Paterson seems to be wired for extraordinary attention, not all of us are. Sometimes, it takes a jarring experience to open our eyes and hearts to the wonder around us. When healing, grieving, or suffering a loss, when my heart and body feel bruised, I feel more acutely aware of everything – perhaps because everything feels changed and tender.
My mind and movement slows down. With narrowed capacity, I start to see more clearly, more specifically. I have a direct experience of how astonishing my body is, how it is all interconnected and how much is actually working without me doing anything. I notice the details of trees and squirrels and the sky and feel how much I love to walk among them. I feel the connection to other people as I receive support and care … and offer it back.
In the swirl and hustle of modern life, it can be easy – sometimes necessary – to zoom breathless through our days. What’s more, in the face of the relentless repetitiveness of modern life, we can grasp for more and more novelty, thrill and excitement. As I wondered 7 years ago, though, “what if I don’t have to add onto my life to restore its vibrant energy? What if I’m already in the midst of everything I need to wake up my natural sense of wonder, joy and awe?”
In this moment, I challenge you to look around and find the most mundane, ordinary thing you can: a book, a lump of dirt, a pen, a dishtowel, an apple, a saucepan. Now take a breath and look at it again. Think about how came to be, what it does, how it looks. Think of the hands and energies that went into it.
Now, with 7 more years of living and healing, I stand behind my 2015 Theory of Non-Ordinariness:
There is no such thing as an ordinary thing, an ordinary person, an ordinary day, an ordinary life; only ordinary attention paid to extraordinary things.