The Beauty of an Ordinary Life
The more ordinary parts of life are full of potential for enriching our lives, yet in modern times where hustle culture, excitement, glamour and almost constant stimulation seem to be the order of the day, the more spacious, quieter aspects of our lives are often overlooked. The noise of advertising has lead us to equate a life of glamour and exhilaration with a life of happiness and contentment. Not in my experience. I’ve found the more quotidian aspects of my life are ripe with opportunities for encountering satisfaction and beauty in the everyday and homely.
One of my favourite things to do is hanging my laundry out to dry on a clothes horse. I love opening the windows and inviting the fresh air in as I’m working. I adore smelling the fresh summer air suffusing all my clothes when I take them down; it’s a catalyst for bringing a renewed sense of warmth and intimacy into my life. It’s a homely task, genuine and sustaining. When we engage in such down-to-earth endeavours with a deeper sense of reverence and care, a sense of creativity and beauty emerges.
Gardening is another everyday activity that has high therapeutic value because it is so basic, grounding and relaxing. Whether indoors or outdoors taking care of plants is one of my favourite activities bringing a sense of ease and calm into my life despite the physical exertion involved, or maybe, in part, as a result of it. There can be a social element involved if one has a plot in a community garden, or more solitary if growing things at home on one’s own like I do. Either way this too can be a catalyst for bringing a stronger sense of connectedness and conviviality into our lives.
The beauty of an ordinary life for me lies in its simplicity. There can be a natural sort of elegance in simple, ordinary delights such as salt, new potatoes, the scent of poplar trees in spring, lilacs, freshly baked bread and apple butter. The quiet ordinary nature of these humble things belies their value as deep sources of creativity, love and beauty.
On the whole, I think the magic of an ordinary life becomes more apparent as we become more adept at caring about common things. When we use our agency to prioritize the ordinary tasks of home life, that hold so much potential for revivifying our lives, we begin to treat them like they matter. And they do matter; they form the critical foundation on which happiness and contentment in our life depends.
Advertisers are in the business of profiting off of our very human needs for acceptance and acknowledgement––for being understood and belonging. Yet we only really begin to be understood when we start paying closer attention to the life inside us, and we only truly belong when we start embracing ourselves and our lives exactly as they are. The gifts of love and wholeness aren’t something that can be bought or sold in the marketplace. All we need is already within the humbler dimensions of our domain. And this, for me, is the real beauty of an ordinary life.
Love and courage.