The Ordinary Life

For a few years now I have been trying to figure out how to make ordinary life absolutely amazing, breathtaking, blissful, extraordinary beautiful.
Perhaps it’s because I live an ordinary life and nothing “exciting” happens very often… Maybe I’m  searching for that “something more”… Or maybe I’m trying to discover that “something more” within  the ordinary life that I already have… I sure hope so! This is a long standing goal of mine because you just don’t see it done very often… If ever?
So how does the ordinary become extraordinarily beautiful? That’s something that I hope to discover all over again. I’m starting right where I am, which is one of the purposes behind my documenting my life. I’m sure I’m going to find it somewhere along the way… I’ve already found it once before!! 
But somehow, somewhere, I became disillusioned and disenchanted with life due to my battle with depression. All the things that I loved felt like they where stolen away from me by this horrible monster of darkness. Oh how I wanted to be me again and love the things that I had found and loved.
DISCOVERING THE BEAUTIES OF THE ORDINARY LIFE
Somehow, in deep meditation, it came to me one day. My life’s events didn’t have to change in order for my life to be amazing. I didn’t need a big exciting life. I had to change in order for my life to be amazing. It would all just be amazing in a different way. Those dreams of daily grand and eventful adventures out and about with my family would turn into small daily adventures of the domestic nature. I’d stop comparing and competing with others in trying to “keep up with the Jones’,” as I compared my life and how “exciting” it was to everyone else’s… I’d learn to love life just as it is!
I first saw the ordinary life through new eyes when I started my visual gratitude journal. I used photography to capture moments, mostly including people (my kids), while also including a small description of what was going on in the picture. Now I’m on the same quest. To document life until I recapture the view I had back then. 

WHERE IS THE BEAUTY?
The beauties of the everyday ordinary are found in small and simple moments. Moments with my kids and watching them grow are my favorites. Those moments are gone so quickly and it seems that, even though there are so many of them, there are never enough.The ordinary and mundane melted away in the beauties of the ordinary life. Too frequently do we take these things for granted. We are more likely to complain over the mundane of every day life, when we could be enjoying the hidden beauties in it all.

House work, folding laundry, sweeping. They are chores and always will be chores. But One summer a few years back I realized that those thing could become fun as me and my kids sang and danced as we worked. Even if it was just me, I’d sing while I vacuumed. Ideally, I’d make cleaning into a fun game with the kids helping. Those were good days. Nothing had to be mundane. If it was mundane, I was choosing it to feel mundane!  It’s time to return to those good days.

All those small moments mean something. Those moments are what our lives are truly made of. I think oftentimes we miss them. We overlook them and let them slip through our fingers. But they are all around us. Our lives don’t need to be anything grand or large to be worth living. They can be wonderful in simple and ordinary ways. The small moments are ever so much more available than the big events of our lives. We have them every day! It’s just up to us to open our eyes, have a little gratitude (maybe a little more sometimes) and relish in the hidden blessings we’ve been given. Make it a good day.

So here I am, talking your ears off about learning to be happy in humble circumstances. So where am I on this journey? So far I’ve tried developing my talents to cheer me up and give me something positive to do and look forward to… and my hope is to turn my artistic abilities into another way of documenting our family’s life together. I’ve continued using photography and writing (blogging and Instagram) to document life and SEE my blessings. All the small everyday blessings that make life so wonderful. All the things that we regularly fail to recognize or fall short of truly appreciating in life. And I’ve fined-tuned the things in my life that are most important to me – my faith and my family – and am striving to set them as my top priorities. Next step is to keep documenting. I have a lot of stories to catch up on. I think I’m off to a good start.

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