Where Ordinary Becomes Remarkable

We are ordinary people. We work. We go to school. We do family time. We plug along building a life together we one day hope we can recall with love and one we hope others will respect. Still, we are ordinary. We have a cat that likes to rip at the carpet on our steps. We fuss a bit over the air conditioning and the heat. We study how to keep the bills paid. We live life a day at a time longing for an occasional day or two away from everything. We earned a few days off not long ago so we packed our bags and got away from it all. It wasn’t an extended trip, just parts of three days away a few hours removed from where we live. Before it was all over we ate some good meals, did away with a dozen doughnuts, had some pool time and walked a lot around a theme park where the six-year-old rode almost as many rides as she wanted.

The day we were scheduled to come home I woke before Jennifer and Hannah. I got up deciding to spend some quiet time of my own. The place where we stayed had a small balcony with a table and two chairs. After making sure everyone was still asleep, I tried as quietly as I could to open the door to the deck. Once there, with no phone, no computer and no tablet, I sat down in one of the black wrought iron chairs.

Although we were in the mountains and although autumn had been declared on calendars, it was much warmer than normal, even in the waking hours of this Thursday morning. My view wasn’t the most spectacular either although if I looked to my left through the trees and past some buildings then into the distance I could see the mountains on the horizon. I have come to understand how a person can take something which seems ordinary then examine it to still find remarkable things about it. I also know that examining the ordinary to find the remarkable usually does the examiner some good.

Despite the lack of a jaw-dropping view what I was able to experience was a good respite from the day-to-day grind we had escaped for a few days. Sitting alone, the quiet echoed in my ears. Occasionally, a car horn in the distance might sound but it trailed away quickly into the void. To the east I watched a jet speed through the sky chased by it’s own vapor trail. In that same sky, clouds floated before my eyes. I watched a set of clouds closely for a time trying to see if I could catch them moving like I might have watched the hands on a clock when I was a kid thinking I could watch time move.

As I studied the clouds a bird loudly squawked toward the south. I turned my eyes in that direction looking for the noisemaker in a thicket of trees. Sure enough, it landed in the tallest part of the tallest tree there and continued to talk.

I watched this bird fly from one tree to another then sometimes to another. Through each winged adventure, this bird remained the loudest thing on the block. I then realized how I had diverted my attention away from the cloud-watching to chase the bird with my eyes. I looked back at the spot in the sky where I had focused a few minutes earlier. The clouds which had been there were now gone replaced by other thin clouds and some blue sky.

And in the midst of this time away, in a few moments of reflection, I came to the realization how this is often how life operates. Focus on one thing then get distracted by another.

In the distance the sun was breaking through clouds. The full force of daylight was about to rain down on this small patch of earth. I sat there trying to be still but knowing the time to return home would arrive soon enough. Even though I tried I could feel some of the cares I had pushed away for a time creeping back into my thoughts. I couldn’t help but think though how quickly the things before my very eyes had changed in just a few minutes even as I sat in this same spot and watched them. You know, kind of like the way life does all the time, focus on one thing then get distracted by another.

I took a deep breath, stood up then walked inside closing the door to the outside and to those few moments of quiet all the time understanding it was opening the door again to the world where the sometimes hard work of day-to-day living takes place. Soon enough, we would be back to keeping the leaves out of the gutters and pondering what to cook for supper and wondering how time moves like the clouds in the sky. And, I suppose if I really reflected on what happens in that day-to-day world, in that place where we grow up, grow old, where we hang on and where we let go, I would understand it is there where the ordinary truly becomes remarkable.