Ordinary People, Ordinary Lives — The Quest for Significance

As a citizen of one of the privileged nations of the world, I can’t help but notice how my society is focused on “hero worship” and the characterization of a few as the “brightest and best” of us. We are social creatures, and one expression of that nature is to enjoy telling stories — mythic tales — to each other, as a way to inspire, entertain, and to vicariously experience transcendence. As with most human strategies, this one has at least one unintended negative consequence: I’m referring to how it is diminishing the significance of an ordinary life, well lived. The fame machine renders ordinary persons invisible.

The very word “ordinary” seems to us to be a slur. While choosing the title of this piece I first thought “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives”, but soon realized that if I chose that, I would be promoting the very distortion I wish to critically examine. I feel the word “ordinary” needs to reclaim its rightful territory, and by doing so, help each of us (who never make the news) feel good about our membership in “The League of Ordinary People”.

Although I have thought along these lines for years, the death of my mother in 2008 allowed these thoughts to bubble up to consciousness again with more urgency and clarity than before. If you have lost someone dear to you, you too may have felt that the significance of one life is very tricky to assess. Immediate friends and family of the deceased are often able to give an account of shared moments that helped constitute their own lives and without which they would have been diminished. These are usually “ordinary” moments — comfort for the grieving, support for the overwhelmed, praise for the unappreciated and guidance for the lost, or perhaps just the well-timed offer of milk and cookies. Such acts are described as loving, thoughtful and caring. Those on the receiving end of such acts are likely to say “she was a good friend” or, “Mom loved us deeply”.

So, what is “ordinary”? “1. Not exceptional in any way especially in quality or ability or size or degree; 2. Lacking special distinction, rank, or status; commonly encountered.” In statistical terms, would we say 2 standard deviations either side of the mean? That includes 95.6% of humanity, so we are clearly an overwhelming majority, if nothing else! But numbers alone do not help us understand “ordinary”. Many things “commonly encountered” are relied upon by all because they are commonly encountered — they are universally necessary — air and water come to mind. Rather than being inconsequential (due to their commonness), these elements of life are foundational. Can we not say this of common decency, common courtesy, common good, common law, even “the common wo/man”? To say something is common, or lacking special distinction should not be construed as saying it has no value.

Nor should it imply a lack of importance. We move through our daily lives with only partial knowledge of what is important to ourselves and to those around us — many stories are told of “turning points” which passed unnoticed by all but one or two people, yet were life-altering, determining the course of history. As science fiction writers are fond of pointing out, change even the smallest detail of the “timeline” and you risk changing all that “happens” after that. Chaos theory has been popularized as “the butterfly effect” — a butterfly flapping its wings in China can create turbulence that eventuates in a tornado in Florida. In other words, small changes in initial conditions produce large changes in the eventual outcome. How would you even begin to calculate the influence of one life?

It is hypothesized that “dark matter” comprises the majority of the mass of the observable Universe, which has spurred heroic efforts to detect it in recent years. Ordinary lives — unseen, massive, influential — are the dark matter of the Humaniverse.

Ordinary people have value and live significant lives whether acknowledged or not. Every parent has at some time wondered what life will hold for their child and whether their efforts at parenting are adequate to the task. “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”, a recurring phrase in a poem by William Ross Wallace, first published in 1865, points out the determining nature of ordinary acts, in this case, mothering. The significance of small, ordinary things has been a subject of song and verse throughout history. The song “Ordinary Miracle” (from the movie “Charlotte’s Web”) invites us to view the mundane events in the world around us as miraculously reassuring. We’re less comforted by the ancient nursery rhyme “Horseshoe Nail”:

for want of a nail a shoe was lost

for want of a shoe the horse was lost

for want of a horse the rider was lost

for want of a rider the battle was lost

for want of a battle the kingdom was lost

and all for the loss of a horseshoe nail.

A complex chain of causation emanates from every “insignificant” choice we make, including the little things that add up to a life, or to a person’s “character”. Overthink this and we risk being paralyzed into inaction out of fear, but such awareness is nonetheless useful, in moderation. If we believe there are no such things as “insignificant acts” and resist the notion of “insignificant people”, we have a rationale for mindfulness, altruism, social action and values-driven choices.

Fame and acclaim can come to some as the consequence of only one act, and that act could be the product of years of careful preparation or mere chance. I know of no way to “weight” the significance of such acts in comparison with a lifetime of consequential choices that may at times dearly cost the one choosing. I confess I find myself more awed by the long term commitment, despite the likelihood that it is about “ordinary” things, like parenting, or honouring a marriage, a contract, a promise.

Would it not be significant progress for humankind if we created space among the exalted few (those whom we praise and reward so liberally) for honouring ordinary people? People who do ordinary things, with integrity and consistency, and by so doing substantially create the world we enjoy. We stand on the shoulders of the generations that preceded us, and (need I say it?) most were not giants, just ordinary folk like you and I. We would do better to learn to honour the many along with the few. “Commonly encountered” does not equal “insignificant”.