Oh So Ordinary

Today we watched American Beauty, which I'd never seen before. Very interesting film and it's obvious why it won so many awards. And the theme of ORDINARY resonated: Lester Burman's "I'm just an ordinary guy who has nothing to lose" but especially this one line by Angela Hayes:

"I don't think that there's anything worse than being ordinary."

I think this is a universal truth in us all, even though very few of us would admit it. We may say we want "the American dream" or "just an ordinary life" but that's not only lying to the world, it's lying to ourselves. Is it the need to feel humble? Who said we had to be humble when it comes to our lives? I don't get this mentality at all and I definitely believe that it is a great unspoken fear, this fear of being ordinary, but we just don't have the guts to state it for whatever personal reasons we may think we have. And, in craving it, I have no doubt that people turn to the darker side of it, the entire "negative attention is better than no attention at all" or those people who kick others on the ladder in an attempt to make themselves appear higher, even if just to themselves. But aside from the obvious negatives, I don't think there's a single thing wrong with loudly exclaiming we want more.

We all want to stand out, to get acclamations, to rise above. No one would want a review stating it was "an ordinary performance" or "an ordinary book". So why would any one state that they want the ordinary? I don't want an ordinary love -- I want a spectacular love, defying odds, a love that others re-tell, the one books are written about and for which movies are made. And our lives, from memories to the future of our personal bucket lists -- does any one have "pay the mortgage" or "take out the trash" on their lists? Of course not. They have swimming with dolphins and climbing mountains and other SO out of the ordinary goals listed and for a reason -- we don't want to die having been ordinary.

I crave the extraordinary, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. We shouldn't settle for less, and we shouldn't think we deserve less than extraordinary. The ordinary becomes acceptable when we all lower our expectations and settle.

The only settling I want to do is to settle into my extraordinary bed with my extraordinary Rick with my amazingly extraordinary kids dreaming their personal dreams down the hall and keep living our extraordinary life and making extraordinary memories.

Also -- don't say ordinary a lot. It starts to sound really weird. Don't believe me? Try it. Say it aloud like 20 times. Just don't accept it.

Same for extraordinary. That one, well, you're allowed to accept that. Aren't you glad I gave you permission for something you didn't even know you needed?

You're welcome.