Grown Up Ordinary

Most of us have allowed ourselves to settle for "ordinary" lives.  We have ordinary jobs, live in ordinary places and spend our time doing ordinary things.  It is not entirely our fault, most of our parents are "ordinary" people too.  And we are following right in line by creating "ordinary" children.

Now that I have offended everyone, let me see if I can walk this back a bit.  I will start by saying ordinary is not in itself a bad thing.  "Ordinary" people make huge contributions to society.  "Ordinary" people are doctors, nurses, police and fire fighters.  They are teachers, ministry workers and parents.  They fight for our country and help to build the infrastructure we depend on.  "Ordinary" does not mean boring, apathetic or purposeless.  I use "ordinary" only to draw a distinction between it and what I term to be the "extraordinary".

This topic (along with another that I may have to release in book form) has been weighing heavily on me lately.  Being at somewhat of a crossroads, pondering what to do next in life, a central longing continues to nibble at the edges;

"I want to make a difference".

I spent almost six years pouring myself and my resources into a business.  I poured everything I had.  But in the end we disappeared from the business landscape of Charlotte without creating as much as a ripple.  Our clients, while maybe slightly inconvenienced by our closing, I'm sure found one of the other hundred companies that do basically the same thing that we were doing for them.  What seemed so important while entrenched in the day to day turned out to be so "ordinary" with hindsight.

"I don't want to be ordinary."

We were in the car one day and I got a great reminder of how many things Zach hears and interprets (It constantly amazes me that he is only 7 years old and not a teenager).  There was a song on the radio by Michale Franti called "Say Hey".  There is a line in the song "The more I see the less I know" and Zach wanted to know what that meant.  Now I had "heard" that song probably a dozen or more time and never picked up on that lyric.  It took me a minute but here was my explanation, "the more you see the less you know means that you may think you know "everything" when you live in your own bubble.  But when you start to look outside yourself and your immediate surroundings you realize that it is a big world and every new experience you open your eyes to, opens a host of new questions and adventures to explore.  And you realize how little you knew before."  I equated it to Zadie and her exploits into learning the world.  Right now she is not mobile.  She knows the world where we set her.  Her crib, the car seat, the swing.  When she crawls, that will open up a new window for he to explore.  Then there is walking, talking, running, riding bikes, and on and on.  Each step she will realize that there is a much bigger world out there than she had ever imagined.

When do we lose the wonder of the world?  I think that is what separates the "ordinary" life with an "extraordinary" one.

"Wonder."

da Vinci.  Galileo.  Newton.  Magellan.  Washington.  Einstein.  Shakespeare.  Edison.  King Jr.  Kennedy Jr.  And on and on.  These were "extraordinary" lives.  Galileo gazed at the shadows and craters of the moon and deduced that the Earth was not the center of the universe.  Newton sat in a contemplative mood, wondering why an apple that fell from a tree always went straight toward the Earth's center.  Eventually this led to his law of gravity. Magellan's crew thought that they were literally going to fall off of the edge of the world at some point during their voyage.  Magellan thought differently.  John F. Kennedy Jr. boldly stated that we would land a man on the moon within a decade, while the guys at NASA still had no clue as to how to do it. We all know how that turned out.  Stories such as these are scattered throughout history and share a common characteristic.  They originated from a person or group that had a true sense of wonder and then the ambition and aspiration to achieve solutions to their questions.

"Quest for solutions."

From the time a new baby is brought into the world, they face a daunting series of challenges and obstacles.  they hear voices, but do not yet have the muscles in their neck to turn in their direction.  They crave mobility when placed on the ground, but they cannot move.  They have so much to say, but no words to express themselves.  And so it goes.  Children see one challenge after another, observe those around them, and with amazing persistence, conquer the task.

This is a process that is rather unique to the human race.  In nature,  most "babies" are born and within a few weeks and sometimes just days are walking, flying, hunting, launching out on their own.  They must, it is the difference between survival and death.

We weren't made that way.  We were made vulnerable, in need of protection.  We were made to ease into the world.  To soak it all in, building our skills, both mental and physical, slowly and with purpose.  We are forced, from birth, to "wonder" and achieve.  I can't imagine that this is by accident or happenstance.  We are built for greatness.  We are built to be "extraordinary".

I don't know how to achieve the "extraordinary".  But if I stop, look, listen and learn from their examples, I believe I have four little miracles that can help to open my eyes to the prospects of becoming once again "extraordinary".

I will leave you with a clip that speaks to a lesson I want to instill into my children.  Also a lesson that I need to re-instill in my own life.