I am in a bit of a rut right now. Nothing much happening, nothing much doing. And I got a bit down about it. And then I had a long philosophical think on the situation and decided to write about it.
We often in our hyper-curated Instagram, Facebook, X, Tik Tok, etc. world often forget that our lives happen in the mundane everyday world. Life isn't a series of disasters or triumphs endlessly posted about. Rather 90% of life is really just the day to day grind. It is this grind and what we do with it that defines our lives and who we are and how we grow. What do I mean? Well life isn't all bells and whistles, most of us get up at the crack of dawn and either throw on yesterdays clothes or stay in our pajamas as we get our kids fed and dressed and out the door to the bus - or into the car for the drive to school. Life is the perpetual search for what food to give the kids in their lunchbox, what to prepare for dinner, get off to work or home office, deal with daily work issues or emergencies (that aren't really ever real emergencies), deciding what to order or what restaurant to go to if the day got away from you and you didn't prepare that dinner mentioned above. Picking your child up from school, or meeting their bus. Asking after their day, there homework, etc. Discussing the day with your partner/spouse or with your kids before getting their teeth scrubbed and getting them off to bed.....so that you can catch a couple of hours of quiet (maybe some TV or reading) before you sleep and start the whole thing over.
Life happens in the above moments rather than in the holidays, graduations, or festivals we attend. We shape our world view based on much more intimate conversations with those we love and who are present in our lives. Our politics and worldview are shaped by the community we live in, but more so by the people we share space with day in and day out.
So life can be bland and tasteless or meaningless sometimes. We need to learn to embrace the grind as it makes us who we are and who we want to become. Accepting that most of our life will be made up of these moments and the structure it gives us is important. I spent six years of my life caregiving for my wife and many of those days just blended into the next - rinse repeat. But all the way up until she passed I know that this experience, those meaningless days made me into the person I am now.
So all of us should recognize that we can't always everyday be the super-hero in our own story. But through our every day actions no matter how boring (laundry, vacuuming, etc) we build a life that at the end of it is amazing. How else do we grow our children into adults we are proud of? How else do we make our own parents proud? How else do we build a career that we are satisfied with.....even if it isn't the one we have hoped for? A brick for each day however bland or uneventful the day.
We are each of us heroes in our own lives and we build the huge edifice that our friends and family see on the outside and if lucky on the inside too. But that heroism isn't from some incredible act or pivotal moment - rather it is the thousands of hours and days strung together over a long life that makes us the heroes of our own story.
Live each day.
