beauty of the ordinary
when i was younger, i thought life was supposed to be a movie. i wasn’t sure what kind, exactly—something sweeping and cinematic, maybe a little tragic, always interesting. i assumed that by the time i was in my twenties, i’d be the main character in a story worth telling. there would be dramatic plot twists, pivotal moments, an undeniable sense of progress.
instead, life felt… small.
i woke up at the same time every morning, drank my coffee, answered emails, cleaned the kitchen, sat in traffic, watered my plants, tried to read before bed and then scrolled on my phone instead. nothing about it was particularly exciting. and for a long time, that bothered me. i kept waiting for my life to begin, for something extraordinary to happen—until one day, it hit me: this is it. this is my life. and what a shame it would be to miss it because i was so busy waiting for something better.
we are taught to glorify the extraordinary, the unconventional, the bold. we celebrate those who quit their jobs to travel the world, who chase their passions with reckless abandon, who reject the mundane in favor of something bigger, better, more. and in doing so, we forget that there is a quiet kind of poetry in an ordinary life.
there is beauty in the way the morning light shifts through your curtains. in the first sip of coffee. in the way your body instinctively knows the route home, even when your mind is elsewhere. in the way your best friend sends you memes at midnight because she knows you’ll still be awake. in the deep, unspoken comfort of a shared silence with someone you love. perhaps the problem is that we have been conditioned to believe that a meaningful life must be exceptional. that in order to matter, we must be great. but i think there is something radical—almost rebellious—about choosing to find joy in the ordinary.
in the early 2000s, researchers at harvard conducted a study on happiness and found that people spend nearly 47% of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re actually doing. in other words, nearly half of our lives are spent somewhere else—mentally checking out, distracted, wishing we were somewhere different, doing something different. and yet, the study concluded that the more present people were in their daily lives, the happier they felt.
this tells us something important: happiness is not about what we do, but how much attention we give to it.
we often chase after meaning as if it exists somewhere in the future—some dream job, some big milestone, some momentous occasion that will suddenly make everything feel worthwhile. but what if meaning is already here? what if it exists in the smallest, most overlooked parts of our day? for years, i romanticized the idea of living in a new city, starting over, reinventing myself. i wanted the kind of life that felt cinematic, effortless, extraordinary. but the older i get, the more i realize that the most beautiful moments are rarely the ones that make for a good story. they are the quiet ones—the ones that happen when no one is watching.
think about the people you love the most. is it the big, grand gestures that make you feel closest to them? or is it the way they remember how you take your tea? the way they text you “home safe?” after a night out? the way they send you a voice note just because they heard a song that reminded them of you?
capitalism does not like an ordinary life because an ordinary life is hard to sell. so we are constantly told we must escape it—buy this course, this book, this retreat, this life-changing seminar. but the truth is, you do not need a reinvention. you do not need to turn your life into a spectacle to make it matter.
in one of her essays, jenny odell talks about how we are obsessed with optimizing our time. we want to maximize productivity, increase efficiency, extract the most value from every second. but what if time is simply meant to be lived? what if our value is not in what we produce, but in the fact that we exist, that we breathe, that we take up space in this world? some of the best lives are not the loudest ones. they unfold in quiet apartments with secondhand furniture, in childhood bedrooms that still have glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, in morning walks to the same café where the barista knows your order before you say it.
maybe the goal is not to live a life that others admire, but one that feels good to wake up to. maybe the greatest rebellion in a world that constantly demands more is to be deeply content with enough. and maybe enough is not a compromise but a choice. a deliberate turning toward the life in front of you, instead of the one you’ve been conditioned to think you should want. because the truth is, life is not a series of highlights, strung together in perfect sequence. it’s a collection of soft moments, some so small you don’t even realize they’re shaping you. the way your mom still cuts fruit for you when you visit. the first deep breath after a long day. the quiet solidarity of sitting next to someone in a café, both of you lost in your own books.
we rush through these moments in search of something bigger, something grander, but one day we’ll look back and realize—these were the big moments. these were the days we’ll miss. there is no right way to live a life, no single definition of what makes it meaningful. but if you can sit in the smallness of a quiet morning, if you can find joy in the ordinary—then maybe, just maybe, you’ve already found what you were looking for all along.
