What control do we have of making our ordinary days, extraordinary? I pondered this yesterday as I attempted a different route to work, a 5 mile walk from Manhattan into Brooklyn, and a long bubble bath. Seeing something that I hadn’t seen before, feet touching new pavement, eyes at new people, seemed to wake me up. A lady toasts to me from her wine glass at a sidewalk restaurant, I watch people experience the glorious architecture of the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time, I feel different air, have a conversation with a local pub owner.
Be present in the moment, take a different path, look directly at the world as it stares you back in the face.
I find ordinary a day of repetitive tasks and events. If I do something exactly as I had the day before, the week before, the month before, what additional experience am I having? How will I remember both days as equally, or even as separate moments? Where do I learn more about life? I most likely won’t even remember differences between those days, and time will get lost in the past. Even if the that difference is small, its impact can be much larger than you think. The next time you feel yourself in a pattern of the same, as comfortable as that can be sometimes, maybe go out and experience different. That different can turn something ok, into something amazing.
“A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
-Albert Einstein
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