How easy I forget how good it makes me feel. How easy I slip into the mundane. I just had to steal those lines. I’m not sure if they're from the friend who ended an email with them, or whether she had borrowed them from a Country song. It feels like something Dolly might sing, or Tammy, or one of those Country Rock gals. Whoever I’m borrowing from: thank you!
Two huge ideas in those short lines, and we’ll forgive the mangling of the grammar. My friend is a fellow writer and life has distracted her from writing for a few weeks. The thing she forgets is how good writing makes her feel. Me too, but it’s not about writing, it’s about whatever makes her, me, you, all or any of us ‘feel good’. We forget it too easily. We forget that it matters.
We get hoodwinked into believing that if something makes us feel good, then it’s a distraction from real life, a diversion from the important stuff. No. The stuff that makes us feel good is often the reason why we are here in this life at this time.
Maybe not if it’s ice cream… but you never know. Maybe your purpose in this lifetime is to make and eat the best ice cream ever. Maybe it is simply to keep your local ice cream van in business so that one day it can come to the rescue of someone who desperately needs the ice-cream rescue remedy. I’ll be honest, I don’t think that’s likely, but I don’t know.
Seriously though, if we pay attention to what we ‘do’ in terms of work or creation or service or reflection or teaching or healing or being with people or researching or…whatever it is we do when we’re not eating ice cream…then the probability is that it really matters. The probability is that it is important and a huge part of why we’re here.
For many years my partner told me that my problem was that I loved my job too much. Actually, I didn’t. At times I actually hated the job. But I did love the work. I enjoyed doing the work, and it made me feel good when I knew I had done it well. I knew that I was helping other people by doing the work, people around me and people I would never meet benefited from what I did. Hand on heart, that still makes me feel good.
But there came a time when I didn’t want to do it anymore. There came a time when I wanted to sit in the garden and write poems. And other things. There came a time when I knew what I am here to do now: is write.
I don’t think I will ever be a famous writer. I don’t think I will ever make more than a pittance from any of my output. That’s not the point. The point is doing this work, putting words down, putting ideas out into the world, whether I’m crafting a poem or rambling on the blog, makes me feel good. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason it makes me feel good is that it matters.
That way round. It doesn’t matter because it makes me feel good, the fact that it makes me feel good means there is something hidden within it that is important. Gosh, that sounds arrogant. And if I felt it only applied to me, then it would be arrogant, but it doesn’t: it applies to all of us. When we feel good about what we’re doing, then what we’re doing has a purpose. Somewhere along the line it will be of service in the world. Even if all it does is make one person smile, when they otherwise wouldn’t have…that will have ripples.
Never underestimate the power of a ripple.
And if all the work does is to make us feel good when we do it, then we go out into the world feeling positive, and because of that we will be happier, because of that we will be kinder or more tolerant, because of that we will smile at strangers – and I know how some days a smile from a stranger isn’t just a ripple, it’s a huge wave of ‘welcome’ in the world.
So let me suggest that you squeeze in some time this week to do something that makes you feel good. Ideally, something creative that you can share, or something constructive that you can share, or just something that involves sharing the time & the moment. Or maybe just take a moment to recognise that you feel good about doing your everyday job or raising your kids or looking after your parents. Feel good, about whatever it is. And don’t forget that.
On which note I come to the second line: how easy I slip into the mundane.
We all want to be living extra-ordinary lives. We don’t want to live in the mundane banality of the everyday. Allow me to let you in on a secret: I do. I want to live a quiet life now. I want to slip into the mundane. The day-to-day. Actually, no, I don’t want to slip into it. I want to dive in. I want to jump in. I want to splash about in the mundane. Because that is where the miracles are.
The greatest miracle on this planet is that life exists at all. And look at how much of it there is just in your neighbourhood. Look at the old people, and how long they have lived, the struggles they have survived, the laughs they’ve had, the loves and joys, and the heartache they’ve gotten through.
Look at the new babies, the children, and all the amazing things that they might do in the years ahead, but think also what a wonder it is that they are here, now, making a noise and being exuberant and excited, and not knowing anything about the world beyond what they can see
and taste and touch.
Look at the animals: the pets, the wild things, dogs and cats and birds and insects. Look at the plants. Look at moss and lichen. Look at wayward fungi that spring up in the most bizarre places. Are not all of these things amazing? Are they not also mundane, as in 'there every day'?
Look at…actually, yes, look at ice cream. Is it not its own kind of miracle? Especially, if it’s got a fruit ripple running through it?
Celebrate the mundane. What is more ordinary than leaves littering the footpaths in Autumn? Or the way trees have that particular goldeny-green after rain? Or how when you wake up early in the morning all you can hear are the comforting sounds of your house functioning, quietly going
about its business of being your home: the clock ticking, the hum of the fridge, maybe the heating has just clicked on and the pipes are gurgling contentedly, something somewhere creaks and you don’t know what, but it’s a friendly kind of creak.
Notice the richness of where you are at random points in the day. If I look up from my desk right now, I see a wall.
I remember the wall when I was stripping paper from it, and wondering if any of the cracks were something I needed to worry about. I remember the wall when I was sage smudging it and telling it to let go what had been, and the following day when I smoked it with Jasmine incense and promised it happier times.
I look at it and am still astonished that I had it painted purple. Or is it lilac? I’m sure the colour was called something like “mystery”or “magical”. My decorator called it "amethyst".
There are three things hanging on this wall. One is a Thangka that I bought on my first trip to Nepal, all dark greys and subtle golds, and blues and the bold white elephant carrying the Buddha. Next is a photograph of swan, serene on a lake of silk, that I happen to know is the Serpentine, and my injunction to myself superimposed on the picture “Write now…” And the third is an old hessian-covered cork-board, a memory board, random photographs of my heritage, of the people who are no longer in my life, except to the extent that they are in me: parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles, a lover, cats.
It’s just a wall, a painting, a photograph and a notice-board. Except it is also memory, and inspiration.
The everyday things of life, the mundane, the banal – they are the very ‘stuff’ of life. They are the warp and the weft and also the rich tapestry that results, we only need to look at it closely.
Look equally closely at what we do day-to-day and we find more and more abundance, more and more richness. I have chosen to live more quietly these days, but miracles are everywhere around me.
I swim in a heated pool, where light reflects on the water, and sometimes music plays, and often people stop to talk to me and equally often I get a quiet session where I can lose myself in my meditative lengths, focussed only on the line at the bottom of the pool and my breathing.
I walk to the pool through suburban streets…and I take delight in the gardens and the street trees.
Some days I wait for buses. The miracle of public transport occasionally working the way it's meant to. I amuse myself by playing the three-second-word-game using the last three letters on car registration plates. And don’t know enough words beginning with X or having a Z in the middle.
Other days I go up to the coast and pick up stones on the beach. Not pearls or diamonds, just pebbles. I sit outside or inside my shack and scribble. I take photographs of sea gulls.
I exchange emails with friends and try to put some good stuff onto the web. I read books. I garden. I housekeep. I sleep.
And you know what? There are millions of people in the world who would envy my ability to choose to do these things.
Please do not “slip” into the mundane. Dive into it. Kick through it. Revel in it. We are so lucky to have it. Treasure it while it lasts.
