"Drama is life with the boring bits left out"
That's what Alfred Hitchcock said.
A problem for many of us is that we've expected life to be a full-fledged, Technicolor, HDTV dramatic epic all the time. I know that I've lived most of my life under this delusion.
But if we're fortunate, we trip over the wisdom that most of life is lived in the little places of daily routines and mundane tasks.
For many, this realization is a disappointment. For others, though, it's a vital learning, leading to mature acceptance. Tamar Jacobson writes:
...recently I have been noticing that, in fact, life is quite ordinary. It seems so much smaller, and my expectations have become almost non-existent. Dreams of academia or the one love of my life have been brought way down to size. I don't think they have been shattered. It's not disappointment, cynicism or disillusionment. I am not sad or bitter about it. Rather, it feels like a peaceful acceptance that life is just that. Little acts, mundane, daily routines. Every now and again someone will surprise me with an act of kindness, compassion or generosity of spirit. Or there will be a beautiful sunrise bringing me out of a painful night. Sometimes life will be sprinkled with fiction that might suspend my reality for a moment, filling me with joy or pleasure and then on I go again, plodding along through life.
In fact, I realize, it is quite comforting not to have to go crazy any more, trying to cover all this reality up with desperation and pain, angst and glorious passion.
Plodding feels just fine to me right about now.
Read the whole thing.
(For more on life lived in mundane, everyday places, go here and here.)