On Being Ordinary

I stumbled upon this article while browsing (i.e. wasting time) online. And I've been thinking about it since.

For those of you know don't know me well enough, I have been a perfectionist for most of my life. Maybe it's because I'm a first-born, maybe it's because of my personality. Whatever, I like succeeding at things. If I can't be really good at something, it's hard for me to want to do it at all. I don't like being mediocre.

But the sad fact is that most of us are. Most of us are just ordinary people. Everything I do well, someone else does better. That will probably always be the case.

I think that most people, whether they admit it or not, want to be special. Not famous or rich or a member of Mensa per se, but they want to be good at something, maybe even one of the best. It's hard to feel like that's achievable when there are so many great, talented, beautiful people in the world competing against you.

But I believe that ordinary people are special. Maybe they will never win a Grammy or give a great speech, or maybe they will never even travel outside of their hometown. What makes an ordinary person extraordinary?

My mother will never believe it, but I've let some of those perfectionist tendencies go. Trust me, I still feel that way about a lot of aspects of my life, but for sanity's sake, I have toned it down a bit. It hasn't helped me feel more extraordinary, but the interesting thing is that it hasn't made me feel less so. I am okay with what my house looks like (for the most part) and that my kids sometimes go to school looking like they just woke up. I'm okay not being the best cook or seamstress. I am mostly fine with who I am and what I can achieve, because even though someone will always be better and smarter and prettier than I am, I can still do some pretty cool things.

I think what makes an ordinary person extraordinary is living the gospel, serving, being humble, and working hard. Each of the heroes in my life would probably see themselves as regular people. They never made it big, they may have never even been very successful at what they did. They probably didn't fulfill some of their life's dreams. But these are the people I look up to. Hard workers whose lives may seem tedious and boring and simple, but who consistently serve others and try to endure, taking each average day at a time.

From the article: "This is the paradoxical promise of an average-day philosophy: The cumulative effect of a series of average days is actually quite extraordinary."

So true. If I could get through each day with a good attitude and get something accomplished, as little as it may be, that's pretty good. If I had days like that every day for a year, that's pretty extraordinary.