In Love with the Ordinary

I love this:
But what people care deeply about and cherish and talk to their therapists most about and fall madly in love with you over is actually your particular combination of ordinary.
The longer I live the longer I see this true in my own life. I’ll give you a very, very personal example:
You see in this vlog that I captured a small moment where my oldest laughs (around the 48 second mark):
I purposely added that into the vlog because I absolutely adore it. In fact, I very rarely keep any original source material but with that small laugh I did.
Why? Because it perfectly captures the little girl-turning-woman right now in my life. I am absolutely in love with this girl and that laugh, that smile, the way she covers her mouth and squints her eyes…
I’ve watched that part 100 times (and counting). I simply cannot get over it.
Here’s the original video that I had captured:
It’s the small things. It’s the small things that end up being the very things that are burned into our memories. If I were to lose her, for whatever reason, it’s this small laugh and giggle that I would miss. My heart would break to not hear it in person every again.
Video and vlogging is one way for me to capture many of these moments as they are happening. What I potentially lose out on, as many critics remind me, is “being in the moment” but the reality is that I very much felt like I was “in the moment” and didn’t miss a thing.
What I did, though, was capture for all eternity a part of the “ordinary” that has permanent significance. That giggle is what makes her so extraordinary… it’s the thing that makes her so uniquely lovable… and it’s what makes her so darn irreplaceable.
I’m madly in love with the ordinary and I appreciate my vlog so much for capturing so much of it in the past year. You see, at this point in time the vlog is for me and my family, the way it should have always been.
Originally published at John Saddington.

