Is your life ordinary or extraordinary? I suspect that most of us would say our life is rather ordinary. Given the choice I reckon most of us would rather an extraordinary life.
What if it is possible for all of us to have an extraordinary life? What if it is not out there as a vague dream of riches and fame, but rather right here; in the midst of the ordinary life? After all, the word extraordinary is made of two words: EXTRA and ORDINARY.
Perhaps the extra is there for us every day; we just have to look for it, listen for it or accept it! And perhaps we can make it for someone else; by creating it, speaking it or giving it! The it being the EXTRA in an otherwise ordinary life!
One of the pitfalls of an agenda filled busy schedule is that we do not always provide the space or create the opportunity for the EXTRA to be noticed. The extraordinary is there every day! Perhaps we overlook it as we go about the ordinary!
Take my roses. I am always amazed that something so beautiful would bud on such a lanky, thorny and ordinary bush. (Well mine are!) Roses are my favourite flowers and it always brings me great joy to pick a new bloom and place it in a vase inside.
This concept of extra in the ordinary challenges me often. Many years ago, our little family of four used to walk and rollerblade around the bitumen walking track of a nearby public park. I asked my neighbour one day to join me on my regular walk. She declined because she said it was “ordinary”. That irritated me. She had dismissed the park and its walk before even giving it a go. When I set off on my next walk, I looked a bit harder at the park and started to feel that she was right and it was rather ordinary; ordinary people, ordinary dogs, ordinary grass, ordinary trees, ordinary sky, ordinary playground. It was an ordinary park. As I walked past the ordinary pond, with its ordinary ducks I noticed for the first time a rather ordinary nest of twigs and branches floating on the ponds edge. The water was an ordinary brown as were the twigs and the reeds around the pond. As I paused a little longer, I spotted something contrastingly red and black. A waterfowl with its glistening black plumage and a bright scarlet beak was busy around the ordinary nest of twigs. I watched in fascination as three or four little heads bobbed out of this nest. “Extraordinary!” I thought. I had just witnessed the first of spring’s hatch in this otherwise ordinary park. For several weeks after that ordinary day, I especially looked forward to my ordinary walk in the park, because when I spotted those little chicks, my life became extraordinarily richer.
Have you paused recently, long enough to listen to a bird’s call, a tune playing, and a child’s laughter?
Have you paused to take in a sunrise or sunset, the cloud pattern in the sky, a flower as it blooms, the antics of a puppy or kitten?
Have you paused to accept the smile of a stranger or the genuine compliment of a friend or colleague, the cuddle from a child or a lick from a puppy, the generosity on the road from a fellow driver or thanked a cheery and helpful shop assistant for a job well done?
Have you offered a kind word today or filled the air with beautiful music?
Have put flowers on your desk at work or gone the extra mile with whatever you do at work to make it look good ‘just because’?
Have you ever surprised a stranger or a grumpy shop attendant with a cheery “Good morning!” or stopped to compliment someone with something positive you have thought, but never been game to say?
Have you stopped at all today to look, to listen and accept the extraordinary in the life you live?
When I next see you and ask “How’s your life?” Will you be able to say “I have an extraordinary life!”
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