Ordinary

I agree with Eckhart Tolle when he says it’s good to be content being nobody. It’s much better to be nobody than to be famous or important. Famous people have too many people chasing them, blaming them, cajoling them for money or friendship, or forcing them onto pedestals that will collapse the minute they make a mistake. Just think of Tiger Woods.

It’s good to be nobody. To be ordinary. I’ve tried to be extraordinary—tried to get people’s admiration with straight A’s, nice hair, spiffy writing—but that game only gives me the worries and turns me into unpleasant company.

When I let myself be ordinary, nobody, nothing special, I get to relax. I can just be there, no push, no yank, no snarly voice in my head. When I’m ordinary, my shoulders drop and I really notice other people—the lines around their eyes, the breaks in their voices. I slow down, dallying over a pink-melting-into-white rose petal or the feel of a carpeted stair under my foot. It gets quiet inside. I lean back in my chair and witness. Nobody needs to be won over or changed; there’s nothing to prove. When I’m ordinary, my hair is just plain brown. But life is tasty and humming and full of rain and trees moving in the wind. Anyway, isn’t everything extraordinary? Those trees, the pink-white rose petal, my plain brown hair which no one else can grow? Isn’t everything extraordinary?

Tell me what’s extraordinary in your life…