Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 25th February 2024
Short one today, inspired by this quote sent to me last week by the lovely Matt Clifton from bemix.
‘Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.’
― William Martin, The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents
The concept of ordinary is clear in my head, but I haven’t always been able to articulate it to other people, and this quote does it beautifully. My framing of ordinary came from my personal experience in the mental health system and then from my kids’ lives, and my Mum’s experience of getting older. All of us sucked into systems where the solution to life not going as planned or us requiring some support seemed to focus on what I and many people I know often talk about as the parallel universe of Serviceland. It’s the solution that offers 4 visits a day, or a locked ward far from friends and family. Filling people’s time rather than having a reason to get up in the morning (test five) or living in a place that certainly doesn’t feel or look like home. Where no one is really paying attention to my opportunity to enjoy the pleasure of a shared meal with people I love or my cat curling up on my lap, or a hug from a fellow human.
I still have people ask me if ordinary is enough. Do I not want older and disabled people to be able to have more than that? Of course I do. I want people to have huge and unmeasurable dreams of extraordinary lives lived and amazing stories to tell. But that misses the point somehow, when what we get so wrong in the world of health and social care is the ordinary stuff, the things that William Martin points to. Do that, and as he says, the extraordinary will take care of itself.
PS. Next Sunday is the second show of The Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast - John Nicoll and I will share our memories of what life looked like when The Boy and The Girl first came to live with us and how that experienced pushed us to start defining Gloriously Ordinary Lives.