Your Most Ordinary Days
This morning I took myself on a walk, exploring a couple pockets of my neighbourhood I’d never walked and trying a new-to-me coffee shop in the area. I just felt so happy and my heart was so full, feeling incredibly grateful for life. I said good morning to six strangers, I had my “Liked” Spotify songs playing on shuffle, I was appreciating the natural beauty of autumn around me — I was filling my cup.
I was also unintentionally being actively inspired, pausing on the sidewalk to jot thoughts down in my Notes every so often. I’d already mentally set aside the second half of today for writing, but it felt great to have inspiration come earlier in the day.
I recently read Brianna Wiest’s newest book, Ceremony — a buddy-read with a close friend. My favourite book of hers so far, it features self-reflective poetry and short prose, each piece no longer than a page in length. I always appreciate her open, honest style of writing that feels so relatable, like she’s stealing from your own thoughts. About a quarter through the book, one of her pieces asks, “What do you want your most ordinary days to look like? That’s your true dream, and you should pursue it.”
Today is all at once an example of my most perfect day and my most ordinary one — it’s the simple things that bring me the most joy on these days. To me, the core of my “ideal day” is time spent with myself, continuing to work on becoming the best version of myself. Today, that looked like: eating healthfully (starting the day with a favourite blueberry protein smoothie at home), exercising (Melissa Wood Health, always and a long walk), exploring in some way (venturing to a different area and coffee shop), reading (It Didn’t Start with You), writing (here!), and listening to my favourite songs.
These are the ways in which I fill my cup, day after day. An ideal day may look different to others, but this is what does it for me. Over the years I’ve learned that I need to focus on myself first. However, I’ve learned too that to a certain extent, I also fill my cup by filling other peoples’ cups — having an impact on others and feeling that I’ve resonated with them is the meaning of life, to me. It brings me such joy and a flow feeling, but I know there’s an important balance I need to keep in mind, one found between protecting my own time and energy, and helping others.
Doing the “right” things — whatever that looks like for you — doesn’t get you anything in life per se, but that’s not the point of them. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to live a good life and be the best person we can. You have to decide you want to keep showing up for yourself and doing the right things, and then actually continue doing them day after day.
A little later on in the same book, the author says, “If you cannot imagine what you’d pack in a single bag if that’s all you could carry, then you don’t know yourself very well at all.” I paused and thought, what would I carry in my own bag? — the main things that came to mind are books (naturally, I’d find a way to fit more than one into the bag) and a pen/paper or my iPhone, solely for the function of the Notes app to write down my own thoughts, as well as impactful lines from books.
This is an interesting question because it prompts you to also reflect afterwards on what your answer says about you. I think what it says about me is that my purpose here is to learn and share, disseminating to others that which I have learned through reading. I think often about how I can use what I’m already reading and learning, and spread that to others in order to hopefully help them in the same way that it helped me.
A passage from The Daily Stoic a few weeks ago (October 25) prompts us to ask ourselves, “What is it that only I can do? What is the best use of my limited time on this planet?” I truly believe these things that I do on my ordinary days are the best use of my time here and the reason why I am here.
Reading is one of the most important things I do every day — I like the whole process of connecting to what I’ve read, reflecting on what I’ve read, and aiming to read new and different perspectives, all of which contribute to bettering me as a person. In Ceremony, Brianna says that one of the best ways to change your life is through reading and that “a book you read this weekend can change your life for decades to come” — reading is that powerful! I like to think my life is constantly being changed by the books I read.
On a recent episode of the NPR podcast Life Kit (recommended by a colleague), one of the speakers says, “The sum total of all you have paid attention to will be your life.” This was one of those stop-you-in-your-tracks moments for me. The lesson here is that life isn’t about what you want to do or what you say you’re going to do — it’s about what you actually do.
After listening to this episode, it seemed that all of a sudden, everything I read and came across that week revolved around this same topic — lines from Ceremony, things friends said, lyrics that came up in songs. Why I love writing here is because I love finding overlaps in the lessons I learn, the experiences I have, and the things I read — and I love being able to share that with others. It gives me purpose and it’s what makes my most ordinary days also my most special ones.
To know yourself is to know what you’d carry in your bag — to know what matters to you. So, what would you carry in your bag?