Romantic delusions. I’m not talking about love and romance and guy/girl. I’m talking about the romantization of times and places and such. We are always thinking about what’s coming or what we wish we could do or be. We romanticize things. We think that it would just be so amazing to live in the Pride and Prejudice times or if only I was a fighter pilot or a pirate or what-have-you. We want things to be different. Maybe we even romanticize regular things like, “One day i’m going to be the perfect boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife.” Or things like, “When I get out of college and into the real world things will be so much better, I’ll have a job I love and do what I want with my free time!” We’re unhappy where we are, and many times the things we romanticize aren’t as good as they seem to be. In Pride and Prejudice times…people didn’t have perfectly straight, white teeth. Oh, did I mention they bathed once a year? Flying a fighter jet isn’t easy either, you have to be pretty smart, and oh ya, you can actually die, and there really aren’t dogfights anymore. Pirates? Just do a little research on what they were actually like. Not someone you’d want to meet in a back-alley!
Why is it that we spend so much time involved in daydreams or movies. I’m not saying these are bad, but we rarely confront…well….life. We don’t daydream about doing laundry, or grocery shopping, or paying bills. These are mundane things that we just do. How many of you have been in a coffee shop or a restaurant or somewhere and a baby starts crying. I mean like those ones that start with this big suck in of air and then proceed to blast your ear drums till they’re bleeding. Did you know in some countries where they torture people one of the techniques used is playing the sound of a baby crying? So we all agree, it’s pretty annoying. But have you ever thought about the baby and the miracle of birth? We take so many things for granted, like right now, it’s storming outside. This annoys me, because it seems like it’s always raining! But rain….falling….from the sky! Who thinks of stuff like this?
So often we wish our life was different. For me a question that’s been bugging me the past couple months is, how do we live in the mundane and be happy? I’ve basically been on my own for about a month. I have gotten lucky and one of my closest friends has moved here to Orlando, so it’s made things easier. But still life can get pretty boring, same thing goes for our spiritual lives. We have those spiritual highs, where we’re really close to God, and then the lows where we’re far away and if we’re trusting enough we claw our way back to Him. But what about when everything is fine? Nothing is really happening, we’re just kind of paddling along. What does it look like to just keep putting one foot in front of the other?
I’ll admit I get pretty bored sometimes and if I don’t leave my apartment I promise you I will go insane. So I get out and do something, usually go to a coffee shop or book store or get something to eat. (I constantly get made fun of for spending so much time at Barnes and Noble or Starbucks). If a reality tv crew followed me around, things would probably not be very exciting, even with their creative editing. We want exciting lives, we want danger and adventure and romance and explosions! We don’t want, laundry and cleaning and traffic and 9 to 5.
But what if? What if, we’ve gotten all wrong?
What if the explosions and danger and adventure and romance aren’t good for us. I’m not saying that it’s bad, well explosions are…stay away from those. But a little of it is good. We also need the mundane though, to let us know what’s worth going through the danger and adventure for. Who’s the girl that we romance and pursue. Once we get past those moments and get to the real stuff, the mundane isn’t so bad. Seeing the rain hit your window, listening to the radio on the way to work, or just spending time with a friend just doing nothing. It may not be very exciting, but when you take time and stop and think, it can be pretty satisfying just appreciating something simple.
“Creative artistry can subtly guide or suddenly jolt us into recognizing the splendor in the mundane. “Normal” may not actually be dull. Maybe we are just dulled, dulled in the capacity to discern the extraordinary in the ordinary.” - Anonymous
“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.” - Matt Smith “Doctor Who”
