The unique nature of ordinary

Or, if you prefer, the Lie of Ordinary

Ordinary and Common are listed as synonyms by Websters Dictionary. In this essay I will share my argument for why ordinary is a bit of a myth. Is any aspect of my life ordinary as it compares to your life? Let’s explore.

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Today’s essay is part of a new series by a group of male writers who have together tackled the same topic in different ways throughout each quarter of the last 18 months. In the past, we’ve explored our thoughts on Fatherhood, Recovery, Money, Trust, Home, and Personal Life Philosophies. This week, we look at the idea of Ordinary Things. Please take a read of my friend’s essays this week, including

Latham Turner

Joshua Doležal

Bowen Dwelle

Michael Mohr

and

Lyle McKeany

.

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I like studying words and how they change in our lexicon over time. Words are the nutrition of writers.

Ordinary is a word to describe something usual. Other synonyms to ordinary are normal, everyday, run of the mill, routine, regular, customary, standard, and unremarkable—among many others. You get the point.

The new normal.

An ordinary day.

A routine investigation.

As if…

Unique is most definitely not listed as a synonym of ordinary. Should it be?

What makes something ordinary? According to the synonyms, something that is part of a routine? Something regularly done? Something routinely done or applied? Is a thing or activity ordinary because it’s shared with many others? Who defines what is ordinary?

What is ordinary to one person is truly extraordinary to another.

Imagine the routine of a soldier living temporarily in a forward camp of a hostile country. Nothing that soldier does each morning to prepare for his or her day is ordinary to anyone else outside of that camp. It may very well be ordinary to those with whom that soldier shares camp, but only due to extraordinary circumstances. Awakening to the possibility of violence and death. Checking defenses and loading weapons. Reading intelligence. Perhaps the only activity in their morning that could be considered common to any one of us is their biology—their morning feeding, constitutions, reading, and perhaps prayer. Even those common things wouldn’t be ordinary to most of us given the setting. How many of us take a loaded gun to the toilet with us?

Is it geography then that determines what is ordinary? Is it timing? Or is it perspective? Context?

Also imagine the routine of a working mother with three young children and a pet. She arises each morning with a tight schedule of feeding, cajoling, consoling, dressing, wrangling, cleaning—all on a tight schedule—trying to get the family out the door on time. An ordinary morning for her.

With my own life experiences in mind, I can’t imagine two scenarios more extraordinary to my own.

The one commonality between the two scenarios above is that both individuals awaken—put their feet on the floor—and begin with the protection and caring of others as their primary mission for those morning moments. From there those paths diverge. Certainly, they may each have common events in their days—but little could be said to be common between them.

If something isn’t shared between people, is it really common? If each is to its own how ordinary can that be?

I look at the ordinary things in my own life. I’ve written about how those things are what force me to be present in my life. Breathing. Focusing on my dog’s snoring and dreaming. One bite at a time. The practice—and it is a practice—of focusing on one small, ordinary thing at a time brings quite extraordinary results. What is found in those fully contained moments brings joy and gratitude.

Back to those two scenarios presented earlier in the essay, I too rise and give most of my initial focus to caring for others before I focus on myself. The dogs come first. Well actually my bride comes first but she has her own gifts of routine that are separate from mine. I get the dogs up—or to be precise they get me up—get them watered and fed and out the door for their business prior to paying attention to my own needs.

The ordinary and routine nature of my mornings is hardly common to very many other people. Others have dogs or cats to be sure, but for the most part my ordinary is unique to me, and the ordinary of others is unique to them.

I chose to get clean and sober after decades of substance abuse. Hardly ordinary as the odds were/are stacked against me to stay that way. Choosing the sober, self-examined path is what this newsletter is all about. As my friend Bowen wrote on Wednesday in his offering on Ordinary,

So if life—and the modern world around us—is addictive by its very nature, then by extension it is extraordinary to live a life of sobriety and inner work.

I’ve chosen to rescue dogs for the last 30+ years of my life. Ordinary for me to spend copious time and treasure to make sure their lives are special. Hardly ordinary to many others.

I chose to get married. So? For the first time at age 65. Most readers would hardly find that ordinary.

As fellow human beings what do we all actually share in common?

We’re alive. No ordinary feat. Life can be a relentless challenge that toughens you, or it can be a lazy roll through a comfortable existence that softens you. Either way you’ll face non-ordinary shit at some point that will largely define you. Part of what makes writers special is their ability to dig into their own personal stories of trauma and adventure—and either document it—or create characters and storylines that grow from it.

How about work? Is there really an ordinary day at work for people? Certainly it depends on the job. An ordinary day for an ER nurse is wildly different from a routine day for a school bus driver—from an IT support person—from a chef in a Michelin 3-star restaurant—from an airline pilot.

Ordinary people do ordinary things—for them—that are quite extraordinary in the judgment of others.

Last year my bride and I had an opportunity offered to us by our good friend Susan Ford Bales. She is the only daughter of President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford. The connections run deep for both Ann and me, and we’ve both had many years working in service to the wonderful Betty Ford Center. Susan invited us to be her guests for an author’s evening up the road in Austin at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. The evening was to discuss the recent release of Richard Norton Smith’s book, An Ordinary Man, The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. The author sat center stage winged by Susan Ford on one side and Luci Baines Johnson, the youngest daughter of LBJ on the other. Ninety minutes of storytelling ensued, followed by a dinner hosted by Luci in the private dining room. Ann and I—invited by our friend to sit at the head table—snuck a wink and a nod at each other several times throughout the evening. Holy shit! This is interesting and pretty extraordinary.

Author and Historian Richard Norton Smith, who has written about several Presidents and public figures, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1983 for his portrayal of Thomas E. Dewey. His premise for the Ford book centered on the many reasons why Gerald Ford was a man who lived an ordinary life and rose to extraordinary things. As I laid out in the very first paragraph of this essay, I call some bullshit on that definition. What exactly is ordinary about captaining the University of Michigan football team, attending Yale Law School, serving in the Naval Reserve, and then rising through the ranks of politics to become the only serving President never elected to the post??

I’ve hung out with world champion and Olympic medal-winning athletes for much of my professional career. Having had a closer glimpse into what it actually takes to achieve those heights, I’m convinced that while those men and women have a daily routine that seems ordinary to them, it would not qualify as run-of-the-mill to me or many others.

My high school basketball team was 29-3 and lost the state championship game by a single point. The Clayton Greyhounds were a legendary small school program in the St. Louis area, led by an equally legendary coach Dawson Pike. I’ll never forget his leading us into a game against an athletically dominant team that we’d never once beaten in years of trying. As we were sitting there trying not to be intimidated, Coach said, boys, those guys over there are just normal dudes like you. They don’t hang their pants on the wall and jump into them—they pull them on one leg at a time just like you do.

What is the common refrain from the neighbors when being interviewed by the bubble-headed local news reporter after a major incident? They seemed so normal. There was nothing out of the ordinary as far as we could see. Yeah sure, except the bomb-building going on the basement and the strange smells and people coming to the house at all times of the day and night. The neighbors were all clearly engaged in an ordinary night of binging Netflix and eating ice cream and not paying much attention to the goings-on of their neighbors.

Think about how the words ordinary or common have been used as a class definition or a downright insult over time. Commoners. The Proletariat. The working man. The Middle Class. The average American. The common criminal.

Ohh no dear you can’t possibly marry him—he’s so common. I’ve never even heard of his family for Gods sake? No No he just won’t do.

Contrary to what I’ve penned in these paragraphs, those of you who have read my work previously know that I treasure simple moments and the joy they bring. Ordinarily I revel in the normal—the regular—the routine. Those moments are vital to my recovery. It is exactly those things that anchor me to an honest and humble self-appraisal of my own part in the world.

However, upon further examination—which is what I do these days—I find more underneath the definitions. What was once ordinary to me was running. I ran to and from things quickly and often without thinking. Now not so much. So which was normal? It’s context then.

In our current culture, it seems that a wish for ordinary might just be a desire for peace. For a time without societal disruption. A time without someone else imposing rules upon us. A day without some news from somewhere that creates fear or outrage. But that ain’t life.

We are all—each to our own and to each other—spirits living in a material world. The mere act of living is extraordinary. I say fuck ordinary.

There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolution
We are spirits in the material world

Our so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail you
They subjugate the meek
But it's the rhetoric of failure
We are spirits in the material world

Where does the answer lie?
Living from day to day
If it's something we can't buy
There must be another way
We are spirits in the material world

Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner 1981

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