Most Ordinary

Most Ordinary by Patti Digh

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are our most potent at our most ordinary. And yet most of us discount our “ordinary” because it is, well, ordinary. Or so we believe. But my ordinary is not yours. Three things block us from putting down our clever and picking up our ordinary: false comparisons with others (I’m not as good a writer as _____), false expectations of ourselves (I should be on the NYTimes best seller list or not write at all), and false investments in a story (it’s all been written before, I shouldn’t bother). What are your false comparisons? What are your false expectations? What are your false investments in a story? List them. Each keep you from that internal knowing about which Emerson writes. Each keeps you from making your strong offer to the world. Put down your clever, and pick up your ordinary.

So far, this has been the prompt that has touched home, that has really placed my inhibitions under a magnifying glass. False comparisons are learned, in my case from my parents. They meant well, but lacking any other more positive methods of encouraging us to do better, they relied too heavily on comparing us to our cousins, to the children of family friends. Look at them, I don't understand why their kids are so good. Why don't they make the same mistakes that you make.

And so on.

From false comparisons come false expectations. How can I be like others? Why can't I be like others, when I can't figure out how? Everyone else is perfect because I've been trained to see them as infallible. I see only a portion of their whole performance, their being who they are before my eyes, and that portion sees no wrong.

So finally comes false investments in the above stories, and false investments in stories about the stories (I can't do what these other people are doing).
And yet I have so much on offer. Others see it more than I do. I've gotten much better. I have. But I forget too easily. I get distracted from doing what I do best and focus instead on how it doesn't compare with so and so, how it doesn't meet what should happen. I get distracted, and therefore get tired with discouragement. Being tired from discouragement is quite a frustrated place to be. It's not ordinary at all.