How About Being Just An Ordinary Person?
We are desperately missing inspiring images of good enough ordinary lives.
Being an ordinary person tends to be associated with being a loser.
The society of our times wants us to imagine that a quiet life is something that only a failed person without options would ever seek. We relentlessly identify success and happiness with being at the centre, in the metropolis, on the stage. We don’t like winter stillness or the peace that comes once we are past the meridian of our hopes. But there is, of course, no center, or rather the centre is oneself.
Montaigne, capturing the point, has written wisely:
Storming a breach, conducting an embassy, ruling a nation are glittering deeds. Rebuking, laughing, buying, selling, loving, hating and living together gently and justly with your household — and with yourself — not getting slack nor belying yourself, is something more remarkable, more rare and more difficult. Whatever people may say, such secluded lives sustain in that way…
