The Quiet Courage of an Ordinary Life

I have spent an embarrassing amount of my life believing I was supposed to be doing something else.

Something bigger.

Something more interesting.

Something more productive.

Even relaxation had expectations attached to it.

If I was going to rest, perhaps I should meditate.

If I was going for a walk, it should count as exercise.

If I was reading, maybe I should read something educational.

If I was cooking, I could try a new recipe.

If I had an empty afternoon, surely there was something useful I could do with it.

There was always a better use for the hour I was currently occupying.

I didn’t think there was anything unusual about this.

I thought it was ambition.

Or responsibility.

Or adulthood.

Now I’m beginning to wonder if I simply didn’t know how to let an ordinary moment be enough.

When Did Ordinary Become a Bad Word?

We don’t talk much about wanting an ordinary life.

It doesn’t sound ambitious enough.

Nobody launches a thirty-day program called:

BECOME REASONABLY CONTENT WITH THE LIFE YOU ALREADY HAVE.

There probably isn’t much money in it.

Instead, we’re encouraged to transform.

Optimize.

Level up.

Find our purpose.

Reach our potential.

Become the best version of ourselves.

And I understand the appeal.

I have bought the books.

I have made the lists.

I have believed that somewhere, approximately three habits and one major breakthrough away, there existed a version of me who had finally figured everything out.

She was organized.

Peaceful.

Healthy.

Creative.

Emotionally evolved.

Her house was probably clean.

I spent years trying to catch her.

The irritating thing is that she kept moving.

Every time I accomplished something, there was something else.

Every answer created another question.

Every improvement revealed another area requiring improvement.

There was never a point where someone rang a small bell and announced:

Congratulations. You may now enjoy your life.

Self-Improvement Has a Very Clever Business Model

There is something worth questioning about an industry that requires us to remain slightly dissatisfied with ourselves in order to survive.

This doesn’t mean all self-help is nonsense.

Some of it has helped me enormously.

Therapy helped me understand things about myself I had spent decades unable to see. Books have given me language for experiences I couldn’t explain. Research has helped me separate ideas that have evidence behind them from ideas that merely sound convincing on Instagram.

Growth matters.

Change can be necessary.

Sometimes your life genuinely does need changing.

But there is a strange contradiction at the centre of endless self-improvement.

At what point are you improved enough to begin living?

Because if there is always another version of yourself waiting to be constructed, the person you are today becomes temporary.

A renovation project.

Something you’re living inside until the contractors finish.

Except the contractors never finish.

There is always another wall.

Maybe I Wasn’t Chasing Success

For a long time, I assumed my constant need to be doing something came from ambition.

I’m less certain now.

Once I understood how much of my life had been shaped by survival mode, I started looking differently at my relationship with busyness.

Doing is comfortable for me.

Problems are particularly comfortable.

Give me something to solve and I know exactly who I am.

There is a task.

There is an objective.

There is usually a right answer, or at least a better answer.

You assess.

You act.

You move on.

Ordinary life is considerably less cooperative.

An ordinary afternoon doesn’t necessarily need anything from you.

That’s the problem.

Because if nothing needs solving, organizing, anticipating or fixing, you’re left with something I wasn’t particularly skilled at.

Being there.

Not becoming.

Not improving.

Not preparing.

Just being a person on a Tuesday.

I didn’t know that could be difficult.

The Suspiciousness of Contentment

For years, contentment sounded dangerously close to settling.

If you’re satisfied, won’t you stop growing?

If you’re comfortable, won’t you become lazy?

If you accept yourself, won’t you stop trying?

If you decide your life is enough, aren’t you giving up on what it could become?

I’ve heard versions of these ideas so often that I don’t remember where they came from.

Maybe nowhere.

Maybe everywhere.

Our culture certainly has an interesting relationship with enough.

Enough doesn’t sell particularly well.

More does.

More money.

More achievement.

More followers.

More experiences.

More productivity.

More healing.

Even spirituality can become acquisitive.

More peace.

More insight.

More alignment.

More enlightenment.

Apparently we can turn absolutely anything into a shopping list.

Psychologist Tim Kasser has spent decades studying materialistic values and their relationship with well-being. His research has repeatedly linked a strong emphasis on external goals such as wealth, status and image with poorer well-being.

What interests me is what happens when we take the same basic logic and point it inward.

Instead of accumulating possessions, we accumulate improvements.

I need to become calmer.

Healthier.

More disciplined.

More grateful.

More mindful.

More healed.

More present.

Better at boundaries.

Better at relationships.

Better at being alone.

Eventually even healing can become another way of telling yourself that who you are today isn’t quite acceptable yet.

That’s worth being skeptical about.

I Am Not Arguing for Giving Up

This is where things get complicated.

Because ordinary life can become romanticized too.

There is an entire aesthetic industry devoted to making ordinary life look gorgeous.

Linen.

Ceramic mugs.

Bread cooling on wooden boards.

Sunlight falling perfectly across rumpled sheets.

Someone wandering through a meadow wearing a cardigan that has apparently never encountered a washing machine.

That isn’t what I mean.

Ordinary life is not always beautiful.

Sometimes ordinary life is changing the toilet paper roll because everyone else in the house apparently believes it replenishes itself.

Sometimes it’s paying the electricity bill.

Sometimes it’s reheating yesterday’s soup.

Sometimes your back hurts.

Sometimes you’re bored.

Sometimes someone you love is annoying you.

Sometimes you’re the annoying one.

Sometimes an ordinary Tuesday is simply Tuesday.

I don’t think we need to pretend every mundane moment is secretly sacred.

That sounds exhausting too.

Maybe ordinary life doesn’t need to be extraordinary in disguise.

Maybe ordinary is allowed to remain ordinary.

Which Might Be the Harder Thing

I’ve been experimenting with this.

Not very scientifically.

Mostly by trying to notice when I am turning something that doesn’t need to be productive into a project.

A walk.

A cup of coffee.

Reading.

Cooking.

Sitting outside.

Going somewhere because I’m curious.

Driving without treating the destination as the only part that counts.

Spending an afternoon doing something badly because I enjoy it.

That last one is surprisingly difficult.

We have somehow reached a point where hobbies require competence.

Paint something and eventually someone asks whether you sell your work.

Bake bread and perhaps you should start an Instagram account.

Write something and you should monetize it.

Take photographs and you need better equipment.

Enjoy gardening and suddenly you’re researching raised-bed irrigation systems at eleven-thirty at night.

Apparently nothing can simply belong to us anymore.

Everything has career potential.

I am trying to reclaim amateurism.

Doing things badly.

Doing things unnecessarily.

Doing things nobody will see.

Doing things that produce absolutely nothing except an afternoon I enjoyed.

This may be one of the more rebellious things I’ve attempted.

What If This Isn’t the Waiting Room?

I think this is the question underneath all of it.

What if the life I’m living right now isn’t preparation for my real life?

I spent a long time thinking in after.

After this problem is solved.

After things settle down.

After I lose the weight.

After I have more money.

After the house is finished.

After work becomes easier.

After I understand myself better.

After I heal.

Then.

Then I will travel.

Then I will relax.

Then I’ll wear the clothes.

Then I’ll take the photograph.

Then I’ll invite people over.

Then I’ll try something new.

Then I’ll enjoy myself.

Then I’ll live.

But life has an irritating habit of continuing while you’re preparing for it.

Years can disappear into after.

Decades, apparently.

And eventually you have to consider the possibility that nobody is coming to announce that the difficult introductory section is complete.

This is not the waiting room.

This is the appointment.

The Courage Part

I’m not sure ordinary living always requires courage.

Sometimes it just requires putting down your phone.

But for someone who has spent much of her life surviving, there can be something genuinely uncomfortable about deciding that nothing terrible needs to happen and nothing remarkable needs to happen either.

That a day can simply be good.

Not life-changing.

Not Instagrammable.

Not productive.

Good.

Coffee in the morning.

Something decent for lunch.

A drive somewhere.

A conversation.

A book.

Rain.

A ridiculous joke.

Finding something at a thrift store you absolutely did not need but inexplicably love.

An apple fritter worth driving farther than any reasonable person should drive for fried dough.

Coming home tired for a good reason.

These things don’t make much of a résumé.

Maybe that’s part of their appeal.

I Don’t Want an Extraordinary Life

That sentence would have frightened me once.

It sounds too much like surrender.

But I’m beginning to understand the difference between an extraordinary life and a life that feels alive.

They aren’t necessarily the same thing.

I don’t need every year to contain reinvention.

I don’t need every experience to teach me something.

I don’t need every difficult thing to have happened for a reason.

I don’t need to turn healing into another achievement.

I don’t need to emerge from everything transformed.

Sometimes I would simply like to emerge.

And then have lunch.

There are still things I want.

Places I want to see.

Books I want to write.

Things I want to create.

Adventures I haven’t had yet.

I am not finished wanting.

I’m just questioning the idea that wanting something tomorrow requires rejecting what exists today.

Maybe those things can coexist.

Maybe I can want more life without believing my current life is insufficient.

That feels different.

A Tuesday Can Be a Life

There will be extraordinary days.

Births.

Deaths.

Weddings.

Goodbyes.

Illness.

Trips.

Achievements.

Disasters.

Beginnings.

Endings.

The days we remember because something happened.

But most of a human life isn’t made of those days.

It’s made of Tuesdays.

Thousands of them.

Ordinary mornings and ordinary afternoons and ordinary evenings when nothing worthy of a memoir occurs.

And maybe learning how to live means learning not to discard them.

Not turning every Tuesday into a gratitude exercise.

Not pretending the dirty dishes are beautiful.

Not extracting a lesson.

Just understanding that this counts too.

Especially this.

For most of my life, I was very good at getting through ordinary days while waiting for something else.

Now I’m curious about what happens if I stop getting through them.

If I let a cup of coffee just be coffee.

If a walk doesn’t have to improve my cardiovascular health.

If an afternoon doesn’t need an outcome.

If I stop asking whether I’m making enough progress and occasionally ask whether I’m enjoying being here.

I still want to grow.

I still want to change some things.

I still have plans.

Probably too many plans.

But somewhere between constantly becoming and completely giving up, there must be another way to live.

A life where improvement is welcome but not mandatory.

Where rest doesn’t have to be earned.

Where joy doesn’t need to accomplish anything.

Where an ordinary day isn’t something to get through on the way to a better one.

I’m starting to think that’s the life I was looking for all along.

Not extraordinary.

Just mine.