Enjoy the Ordinary
No viral epiphanies. Just a quiet reminder that enough is, well… enough.
There I was, standing in the kitchen, waiting for the toast to pop up – again (more toast saga can be found here) – when it hit me: I’ve forgotten how to be a person without notifications. My phone was charging (a true crisis), the TV was off (even worse), and I’d already read the back of the cereal box (twice). In my desperation, I did something radical.
I stared at a wall for six whole minutes. No scrolling. No podcast. No productivity hacks. Just me and the hypnotic journey of a tiny crack in the paint.
And to my utter confusion, it wasn’t that bad. A little boring, sure. But also… oddly calming? Was this what monks felt like?
Turns out, one of the reasons we’re so willingly and easily distracted is because we’re not very good at dealing with the ordinary. It’s boring – so we chase stimulation like caffeinated squirrels on rollerblades. We scroll, swipe, snack, refresh, repeat. All to avoid sitting in that quiet, twitchy fog we call boredom.
But here’s the kicker: boredom, according to actual mindfulness experts (and one suspiciously wise card I found), is often a sign of calm mixed with restlessness.
A while back, I came across a mindfulness card in the break room in my office that put it beautifully:
It hit me harder than it should have – because deep down, I knew I’d forgotten how to simply be.
That means maybe, just maybe, your morning routine doesn’t need a soundtrack, five browser tabs, and a podcast about optimizing your chakras. Maybe you don’t need to multitask your way through brushing your teeth like it’s a corporate project deadline.
Sometimes, the moment is enough.
This doesn’t mean giving up on ambition or excitement or doomscrolling Instagram at 2 a.m. (Let’s be real, that’s staying). But it does mean you can also enjoy the stillness – the quiet clink of dishes, the way the afternoon light falls on your floor, the suspicious judgment of your cat or dog.
Somewhere along the way, we got tricked into believing that being “ordinary” is a problem that needs fixing. As if just being – just existing, loving, showing up – isn’t enough unless it comes with fireworks and a highlight reel.
We want our lives to be epic, our jobs to be meaningful and well-paid and flexible, our relationships to be deep and passionate but also light and low-maintenance, and our kids? Oh, they need to be gifted, creative, emotionally intelligent, athletic, and able to explain quantum physics by age eight – or we feel like we’ve failed them somehow.
But why?
Why is “ordinary” such a dirty word?
Why is a steady partner, a quiet Sunday, a B-average kid, or an uneventful week somehow not enough?
The truth is, most of life is made up of quiet, unremarkable moments. Brushing your teeth. Folding towels. Arguing with your spouse over how the dishwasher should be loaded (spoiler: you’re both wrong). And that’s not a flaw in the system. That is the system. Those little moments are life.
We expect our relationships to be magical all the time – but relationships are made of Tuesdays. They’re built on eye rolls and inside jokes and shared silence. You can’t expect someone to dazzle you daily just because a rom-com told you love is supposed to feel like fireworks. Fireworks are loud, exhausting, and illegal in most residential areas. Real love is quieter – but more enduring.
It reminds me of when I used to visit my grandparents. They’d spend hours sitting in the verandah of our first-floor townhouse – side by side in plastic/cane chairs, just sitting there, watching the world do its thing and gazing out at the street like it was a live performance.
If I wanted to be with them, I’d pull up a chair and just sit too. We didn’t talk much. We just watched – cars passing, leaves moving with the wind, sometimes even the complete stillness when there was no wind at all. It was quiet. Uneventful. And somehow – perfect.
My grandma used to call it “sightseeing.”
I remember laughing, like, “Where are we traveling to? What are we seeing?”
But she meant it quite literally – sight and seeing.
Looking out. taking in whatever the moment offered.
And it was satisfying. Deeply satisfying.
That was the rhythm of their days. Someone would bring them coffee on a tray. Another would show up with a spoonful of whatever was cooking in the kitchen – asking for feedback. Grandma would taste it, squint, and say, “Needs more salt.” Or “Let it boil a bit more.” Then go back to staring at the street. Yawning. Blinking. Sipping.
What looked like boredom to us was actually their exciting ordinary. A kind of daily contentment rooted in repetition, in rhythm, in the gentle passing of time.
They weren’t escaping the moment. They were inside it.
Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong direction.
Maybe our ordinary moments aren’t in the way of life.
Maybe they are life.
The truth is,
this revelation comes amid a growing cultural crisis: people everywhere are losing their ability to sit still without spiraling into existential dread. A recent study found that 9 out of 10 adults would rather receive a mild electric shock than sit in a room with nothing to do. The 10th adult was just really into shocks.
But mental health professionals say the cure for modern malaise might not be more stimulation – but less.
“The Mind is like tofu, it tastes like whatever you marinate it in.” says Sylvia Boorstein, mindfulness teacher, psychotherapist and author. Ordinary Moments too are bland at first glance, but absorb the flavor of your attention. Plus they don’t cause existential burnout.
I see it in my child too.
The moment the screen goes off – TV, tablet, game – there’s panic. “What do I do now?” they ask, as if the world’s gone grayscale. Sitting still, just being, feels like punishment. Like a glitch in the day. The idea of doing nothing for a few minutes? Torture.
But is it really?
Is it a punishment to sit quietly and listen to your own thoughts? Or is it a skill we’ve forgotten how to teach – and practice?
I don’t blame them. The world has trained us all to be allergic to stillness. But I do wonder what it might look like if I could show them – gently, patiently – that life doesn’t have to be loud to be full. That sometimes joy comes not from doing, but from being. From watching clouds. From lying on the floor. From a question asked with no rush for the answer.
Maybe we all need to re-learn how to be bored.
Or better yet – how to be still.
Feel the moment before it passes.
Sip your coffee like it matters.
Call your grandma if you’re lucky enough to still have one.
Stare at a tree like it’s trying to tell you a story.
Enjoy the ordinary.
Before it quietly slips by – taking the extraordinary with it.