A PERFECTLY ORDINARY DAY

and the extraordinary magic it holds

How often have you met a childhood friend and spent hours going down a memory lane that leads to school and college life? Met old colleagues and laughed over silly jokes that took place at the workplace? Do you remember the conversations with siblings and cousins that circled around childhood stuff - favourite tv shows, visits to the local markets, funny neighbours, most loved and hated childhood foods and fetishes? Have you seen parents remembering time spent with their kids doing school projects and fussing over their pet peeves? Have you heard grandparents talk endlessly about memories of mundane things in their lives like their jobs and work routine or simple weekend rituals which seem unique and special now? 

A memory of a design studio I was a part of close to a decade back. Image: Nitin Mandhan

If we think back to the time when we created these memories, we find them disguised as the most ordinary days in our lives - school days, examination days, workdays, taking-care-of-someone-ill days, days for running errands and days for meeting deadlines and so on. However, these memories make us realise that some of the most magical moments in life are the ones spent in the everyday rhythm of life. It's only as time passes by and we look back at the everyday stuff in our past do we realise how special they were - those lunch breaks with friends, the drive to drop off a kid to school, studying together for a test, dinners with family, reading a book in bed, cooking a meal, weekend visits to the local market… 

In our postcard of memories even the most ordinary ones gather a patina of nostalgia over time. 

The ordinary becomes the extraordinary over time. Image: Anita Jankovic on Unsplash

Surprisingly, when we go about our daily lives and experience these moments in real time we fail to notice their magic. We often get tired of routine and yearn for change. The everyday stuff like getting out of bed every morning, a quick shower, breakfast and work gets boring. We long for variety, change, and rest. We look forward to long weekends and vacations, festivals and celebrations so that we can give a slip to all that's routine and escape into someplace else. 

A walk down memory lane reminds us that the beauty of life lies in a series of ordinary moments strung along the thread of time. Every moment, however routine, has its own place in the story of our lives and if we take time to notice, a perfectly ordinary day is filled with extraordinary magic. 

Lockdown diaries with a book and my pet is a beautiful memory today. Image: Author

Every night we go to bed and enter into an altered state of consciousness, taking for granted that we will wake up the next morning. As night transforms to morning, the shroud of darkness is slowly lifted. Every single day the sun and the sky collaborate to put up a spectacular performance at daybreak. Light enacts a slow dance, painting the sky in shades of fuchsia and orange, fading into a shade of blue. Sometimes the performance is sombre. The world looks grey and serene, the sun obscured by a canopy of dense clouds. On other days, the sky is bursting with optimism and promise, colour and joy. Nature rejoices in this beauty as the waters and the land awaken to daylight, and yet, distanced from nature and absorbed in the compelling routines we have built around us, we wake up believing that it is another ordinary day. 

A spectacular sunset on a perfectly ordinary day. Image: Author

Sleep is a blessing not just because it holds our hand and leads us to a place of rest, but because it gives us a chance to wake up and live and love once again. What a privilege it is to wake up every morning, to live another perfectly ordinary day, meet people, get work done, laugh with friends, and spend time with people we love. 

What if we programmed our minds to look out for the magic in the ordinary? What if we enjoyed the everyday moments in our lives in the present instead of waiting for them to become a memory? What if we lived each day as if it was an extraordinary miracle? 

For if you actually think about it, that's what it really is.

“Do ordinary things with extraordinary love.”

- Mother Teresa

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