Embracing the Ordinary: Finding Joy in Everyday Life

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

– Mary Oliver

My day didn’t exactly start off well yesterday.

The leak in our shower persisted. This leak which re-appears each summer, caused by something different every time, and takes multiple visits from plumbers to diagnose and solve drives me nuts.

The house was littered with the detritus of two teenagers who are very much in the middle of their summer vacation.

And then. Well, a very large quilting project that I had painstakingly laid out on the living room floor got “disrupted” (the most polite way I can think of saying what happened to all my tiny square of fabric) by the aforementioned kids as I tried to hurry them out the door and off to their commitments.

I did not react well. At all.

All these innocuous perceive disruptions to my perfect day drove me to tears. Literally.

It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? That these silly little, annoying but fixable issues, set my day, and thanks to my reaction, my kids day off in the most awful way possible.

Sometimes, especially in the age of the internet and the omnipresent influence of social media, that every day should be nothing short of effortless perfection. Sometimes, because I did survive a brain tumor, I feel guilt to make something of every day because I have been given this precious gift of life. And sometimes, I feel guilt because I wonder what on earth it is that I’m doing with this one wild and precious life that I have.

But then I remember a quote that I hung onto dearly when I was going through my diagnosis and surgery when all I wanted was to have a “normal” day:

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth or bury my face in the pillow or stretch myself taut or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return. – Mary Jean Iron

And so today, I will strive to have the most “normal” of days. I’ll still have to deal with the leaking shower, and the little messes around the house, and putting my sewing project back together, but I can do it knowing that there is a special magic in all this ordinary stuff of life.

But more importantly, I can go through my day knowing that I can use this one wild and precious life that I have to enjoy all that this life has to offer.