THE EXTRAORDINARINESS OF THE ORDINARY

Like most people who go about their business without any fanfare, quietly absorbed in their daily routines, their work, their play, their rest, I too have lived my life quietly. All off the radar. Not that we are not occupied or busy enough; on the contrary, there are many among us who struggle to find enough hours and minutes to fulfil pressing responsibilities. Nor that we are sadly by ourselves, neglected or unnoticed. There are those who know us personally, those whom we call our community of friends and family, from whom we draw strength, support and solace, love and laughter, those who would probably miss us if we were to disappear. But they are mostly drawn from our pool of common folk, mostly like us, none of us claiming to leave any indelible prints on the sands of time. This is us, the vast human majority, the bustling and throbbing yet faceless multitudes. We form the bulk of humanity, are betrothed to it, gaining from and giving to it, but apart from the perishable memory of a few moments of togetherness, of strife or of joy, we leave nothing of our individual journeys behind. Effaced.

Which doesn’t mean that we are valueless. While we live, we make it all worth living, meaningful enough, important too. Not only for us individually but for the entire collective stretched across the globe, thrumming and humming like a humongous bio-machine with each of its many billion parts doing its chosen/allotted job. Since the dawn of time until eternity, or the more prosaic equivalents of those poetic extremes that would hold true for our species. If one of the parts goes rogue, or fades away or breathes its last, no matter, there are plenty more that stand up to soldier on in place. The human collective breathes on, we make that happen just by our own breathing. And yet, indispensable we are not, not as individuals.

Nor am I complaining about my anonymity. On the contrary, I find refuge in it. That the public gaze doesn’t rest on me, leaves me invisible, free from its unsparing judgement. My ignominies, if any, rest within that limited circle of known people, not flung into media to be minced, chewed, and spat out. Not that I am not judged, we all are, by those who surround us and know us and who presume to know better. The yardsticks of judgement are moulded by all those who hopefully do know better, given to us to enforce, underlain by their evolving templates of morality and codes of ethics, leaving only the glaring aberrations to the remit of judgement by the powers that be. And, of course, the world at large.

Yet, the seeming ordinariness of our lives isn’t to be construed as dull and uneventful, or uninteresting. Even though the events from one life may closely resemble those of another, they are unequivocally unique for the person who lives them in her own timeline, unmindful or even unaware of the doppelganger who matches her step for step. Every major event, every minor incident, every milestone, every daily sunrise and sunset are as exclusive and unprecedented even if they were replicated in billion other lives not only in the here and now but through the churning of time. The joy of finding love, the grief on losing it, the validation from acknowledgement by our peers, the conviviality with the like-minded, the wariness of the different, the jealousy of those who stole a march on us, the sweet vindication when we paid them back in kind, the fear of loss, the anxiety about outcomes, each of us has and lives her own. We may recognise it in others and have that uncanny sense of déjà vu, or a blasé been-there-done-that but when we experience it for ourselves it is new every single time.  

We do not shine in the celestial orbits of celebrities, but we have our own solid challenges, our shares of triumphs and defeats. We are as motivated by ambition, greed, love, lust, jealousy, curiosity, as those whose journeys and feats have catapulted them to the attention of all. Maybe our hunger to shine may not match theirs, nor certainly does our providence. Yet there are those who are as hungry, as determined and as resilient when knocked back by failure, they struggle and struggle even though success eludes them, even though they never soar into the limelight they hanker for. Hope resolutely plods on and so do they.

Which brings me to the premise of most of my writing: ordinariness matters. As much as the extraordinary. Not merely because it provides the base fodder from which the extraordinary is fed its attention, but also because hiding behind that mask of the common is a human who has as much worth and as much claim to dignity and respect as any other. A human who has probably overcome many challenges, has her own share of gifts and aptitudes, her own dreams and ambitions, her own journey with its own twists and turns. The ordinary is not necessarily placid, staid, nor negligible or contemptible. Nor is placidity contemptible. The ordinary may be obscure to our eyes that are focussed on the spectacular, on the outliers, the super-achievers, the super cons, the super-aberrations among criminals, the celebrated and notorious. And yet, the seemingly ordinary is as full of drama and intent and meaning as that which is beyond its pale.

I think of those who strive determinedly to rise from the pits of their existence, clawing and crawling their way out, from the dark to the light, only to draw level with the billions of us who already stand blessed enough, securely in the light, feet firmly on the ground. The base of our existence is their aspiration. We neither see nor hear them, but the drama of their journey is as intense and as worthy of our attention and praise as of those who rise from our midst, soar above us all, and shine for us all to applaud.

Even those among us who aren’t as gifted or as fortunate as the spectacularly successful, their journeys too are full of drama. It could be riveting drama if we could only peel away the obscurity and see these ordinary folk for what and how they are, what and how they’ve travelled through to merely remain where and how they are. They may be fed platitudes that life is short, we get to live it only once, so cherish every moment and focus on the important, the real stuff that life is made of. However true that may be in the general perspective, when they are going through the nitty-gritty of making ends meet, paying bills that show up without fail, meeting deadlines just to be able to survive, swallowing insults and injuries when they fail to deliver, staying relevant and employable in this fast-morphing world, battling disease, surfing anxiously through the uncertainties of living itself, working on and on as if without end, life might paradoxically appear arduously long. And while doing all this so much might be slipping out of their hands: time itself and all that it could gift, the company of their friends, attention to and from family, their own health both physical and mental, so many moments and experiences that they could have had, all that makes them appreciate that life is too short, there wasn’t time enough to fulfil these other things. There is remorse, frustration, anger too. Give me a break, they may scream at times, not that anyone’s listening. But they let out steam and resume their endeavours, going through all the steps that are mandated, that make a life, their life. We don’t pause to pat them on their backs. We shrug off their efforts: what’s so different about that, isn’t everyone doing the same, aren’t we? Yes, we are. Isn’t that great?

We are so caught in chasing the extraordinary that we fail to appreciate how solid and how inspiring the ordinary too may be. Special aptitudes, skills, genius, benevolent lady luck, we crave it all. If only we had that we could be that other special thing that everyone is celebrating, rewarding handsomely, we think that and our hearts and minds gloss over what we have, what we are capable of. No, we leave no footprints on sands, how can we? For we are the sand itself, that soaks it all, dries itself enough and gets ready to embrace those that walk with grace. They are because we are. And if they weren’t, we still would be.