Now I’m ready,
To be extraordinary.
Question.
What do you do to turn the ordinary little things into extraordinary amazing things? By that I don’t mean something divine or perched upon a lofty pedestal. What I mean is that we need to take the time to see within the ordinary, its capacity to be a precious thing. Something utterly extraordinary. A gift.
Steering away from telling ourselves to strive for extraordinary lives. That we can only be happy, only feel fulfilled if we lead extraordinary lives for while that might seem aspirational (admirable perhaps), it can also be rather lofty and fraught with unrealistic idealism. All of which could very well be the path to setting ourselves up for disappointment.
Instead, we should be seeking to find the joy and marvel in living an ordinary, normal life. Once we do that, the most mundane of things (nondescript even) will pulsate and come alive with magic and wonder. The extraordinary will happen on its own then.
Take for instance the act of baking.
With Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s Eve just passed, there have been (far too) many scenarios wherein pulling out the ole mixer, bags of flour as well as sugar, eggs and butter have been called for. Now, I adore baking up a storm but when you need to do it on a weekly basis (and in the instance of the 25th and the 31st, a mere six days), it gets very tiring very quickly. In fact, it escalates into being a chore faster than you could measure a tbsp of vanilla.
I exaggerate but you know what I mean. So, in order to turn this going-from-ordinary-to-killer-mundane activity into something extraordinary, I shared it with the people I love namely Eve and Michael. In every possible way. And by that I mean that essentially we baked an entire flourless chocolate cake together.
Perhaps assemble would be a more apt description. Regardless, we each took ownership of one aspect of the cake-making process, enjoying every little aspect of it from melting butter with bitter chocolate (Eve claiming that she used her fire power to accomplish this) to Michael (gallantly) separating white from yolk, to my gently folding in the (almost flailing) meringue.
It was SO MUCH DAMN fun.
Rediscovering the joys of baking.
Making the ordinary come alive.
Letting the extraordinary happen.
Does that make sense?
As is the case with this photo shoot.
Allowing myself to really be in the moment with Eve, and thoroughly enjoy what we were doing. The cold (it was 1 Celsius that day in Brenham). The blustery wind (I’m certain we flashed quite a number of the townsfolk). The giggles (I always ALWAYS have fun with mah boo but sometimes I get so caught up in documenting our time together that I forget to be truly present) (this time, however, I put my phone away).
My hope in sharing this story with you is to inspire you to sift through life, work, business, to identify what society would deem as the mundane, and then I challenge you to shift your perception of these ordinary acts. Change your perception and change this “ordinary” activity into an “extraordinary” experience.
One that you will remember cherish for the rest of your life.
They don’t have to be complicated, or arduous.
Like reading a book out loud (Eve and I used to do this all the time, changing our voices and enacting roles, I need to start this again), or watching a music video together (we love you, Adam Lambert) (or TV show, we adore Once Upon A Time and Say Yes To The Dress). Singing (or rather she sang, I cackled). Car rides (we’d just drive around the neighbourhood with music blasting, or not, fly over the road bumps for the fun of it, and laugh hysterically).
Just simple things.
A final parting thought.
Imagine the freedom you will experience once you are able to shift those perceptions, and see the world through different tinted lenses. Imagine how fulfilled your soul would be.
And I leave you with these words, “Extraordinary magic is woven through ordinary life. Look around!”
Yes, look around indeed.
Love, Sheela
I link up here.
Sheela Writes 