We are extraordinary ordinary people in our own right

Yesterday a friend and I were conversing about life based on the way people treat us and our reactions to them. Based on what our expectations of ourselves are and how sometimes they can be so lofty that we forgot who we are. Forget to live our lives because we are not in it. We are trying too hard to be beyond it. Over there. Not here.

And what I realized is we spend so much time trying to be extraordinary rather than being the ordinary people we are that we lose out on seeing the ordinary every day blessing in our lives. The ones that could lead us to the extraordinary life we are meant to be living. By projecting we take ourselves out of seeing night turn into day, winter turn into spring, flowers bud from seeds, baby birds hatching, trees come to life again after their winter sleep. We overlook the butterfly fluttering across our path. The birds chirping in the morning. We overlook these ordinary extraordinary events because we take them for granted. So we don’t even see them. In our minds, they are so ordinary that they don’t matter. But they do because they remind us that life is constantly changing. As are we.

Imagine if we stayed focused in the present moment and truly were aware of all that we have, are and are receiving in that one moment. Like the ability to wake up in the morning. The ability to see. To hear. To walk. To talk. To touch. To feel. Using our five senses and the sixth sense of our intuitive minds. Imagine how much more fulfilled we would be. We would understand that we are extraordinary with all that we can do.

Being extraordinary beyond ordinary comes with added burdens such as not being able to walk down the street without being recognized. Not being able to do the simple mundane things we do every single day of our lives without being followed by someone who wants something from us. Demands something from us. When our heads rise above others, we put ourselves in the position of being knocked down. Taken out by the ordinary people that put us on the pedestal in the first place.

We don’t realize just how fortunate we are to be anonymous when we need to be. To not have people constantly hounding us because we are extraordinary. I’m sure those people who become famous wish they could be anonymous just once again so they could live ordinary lives. The very lives we all take for granted.

And then I am led back to a book I was meant to write. A book I dismissed because I am not famous. Not extraordinary. A book called, “An Extraordinarily Ordinary Life”. And the premise of that book was to talk about the fact that I realized by living my life as I am meant to, rooted in the present moment, appreciative of all that I am allows me to live an extraordinary ordinary life. But somehow I allowed the thought that my life is very ordinary to make me believe I did not have an extraordinary story to tell. Forgetting that each one of us is extraordinarily ordinary with an extraordinary story to tell because not one of us is exactly the same or reacts the same or lives the same.

My conversation with my friend yesterday helped me to remember that where we are right here, right now no matter how ordinary and mundane it may seem is exactly where we need to be. Not reaching for tomorrow that will never come. Not reaching back into the past we cannot relive. But being rooted in this present moment. Aware of all that I am. Grateful for that knowledge allows me the ability to live an extraordinarily ordinary life. As can you. As can we all. Namaste.