“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.” William Martin

William Martin applied classic Taoist wisdom to the world of parenting. He points out the opposing positions of striving for an ordinary life and an extraordinary life. I switch at a dizzying rate from one position to the other, and I want to uncover which is right for me so that at last, I can stand still for a moment and move forward down one clear path.

What I’m wondering though is whether it really is a choice between one or the other as Martin implies. We romanticise about finding the ‘extraordinary in the ordinary’, but in all honesty – in reality – can we have both?

One immediate challenge is that what is ‘ordinary’ and what is ‘extraordinary’ will differ greatly from on person to another. But even more problematic is that we are susceptible to fool ourselves here. We will lower our definition of ‘extraordinary’ - whether we’re talking about a partner, an achievement, or some possession – when we need to inflate our ego, or to fool ourselves enough to accept our dissatisfaction with the lives we built. Whilst this surely makes us less ambitious and less likely to reach anything close to the limits of our potential, perhaps it works to put us in a state of gratitude, from which success is argued to stem. We’ll similarly raise our definition of ‘ordinary’ when we want to have, or achieve more.

Or maybe, that is just a consequence of my defining ordinary and extraordinary as a product of achievement, which could, like most of my preconceived notions yet to be revised, be completely and utterly wrong. I’m thinking about it…