Ordinary

Most of our ordinaries aren’t ordinary

When you think about them

When you take away the context of today

Or personal familiarity

Shift your point of view away from privilege

Reconsider commonplace expectations

From alternative perspectives

Like refugee camps or cacao plantations

Where there are scant comforts and no need for glossy ads

Places where it’s ordinary to have nothing

Where the same old means starkness and struggle

Not the ennui of boredom

Where all the ordinaries grow obese

Fattened with empty promises

Spurred on through enhanced consumption of sweet nothings

Until every luxury and remarkable delight loses luster in our clouded sight

Where miracles are hidden in plain view

We don’t see them anymore

We think they’re ordinary

Common, unremarkable, usual

Extraordinary, cloaked by repetition

Extraordinary, masked by tedium

Extraordinary, muffled by a lack of imagination

Most of our ordinaries aren’t ordinary

When you think about them

David Trudel     ©  2013