Do you usually do anything out of the ordinary?

Answer 1

My entire life has been about escaping the ordinary world so many I have seen around me slowly surrender to, forsaking their dreams, conforming, accepting so much less than what might be, spending their days in silent complaint, selling their dream short, day in and day out in a mind-numbing rut of drudgery they accept in place of their dream, falling into that old rut, that old mental trap, work until you retire, a slave of the punch clock....

From very early on, I have struggled harder than many, perhaps most, to wrestle with the biggest question we all have -- why am I here?

"Ontological insecurity" is a fifty cent term for the angst we endure as we muddle through this mysterious life thirsting for knowledge and questing for meaning.

It is that familiar feeling of being unable to accept this life and this world as anything ..ordinary...

I know this feeling very well, as it is my life.

And, setting out from the beginning, to live a life unordinary, I soon found I was in conflict with all the people I knew who had surrendered their dream.. people who do not like some young man flouting his young, maybe sometimes naive, exuberance for life, for life lived full and free, for the life unordinary.

People like my father, a good man, honest, hard working, devoted husband, loving father, a man who left his dreams behind and settled for so much less than what he might have had, doing it for reasons like most others, to keep a punch-clock, mind-killing job so he could provide for his family, best he knew how. Born before the depression, on a red dirt farm, raised on a life of constant toil, and precious little respite, and enduring hardships, like losing his parents while still in his teens, like fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, The Ardennes, in France, Belgium, and Germany before suffering frostbite in the Ardennes, which probably saved his life, and thus allowed my life to happen. This "ordinary" man...in his "ordinary" life...who is to say what is and what is not ordinary for any?

Still,I, on the other hand, born into the "baby boom" and grown up in the 60's and 70's, had the gift of opportunity to look around, and quickly learned that there were many others in this world who did not settle for less.. who chose to live life with passion, with exuberance, and not to forsake their dream ...

and my father came to hate me for what i was to him, i upset his world, so carefully balanced -- so deliberately ordinary. so meticulously held together, so walled off... so sad when people give all and get only a life of silent complaint... not to say he had a bad life... 50 years of faithful loving marriage, four children, so many things we did... most unordinary.. like climbing up on our garage roof on summer nights, with binoculars, gazing at the moon, and the beautiful Milky Way...spontaneous, unplanned day trips to the mountains... long walks together after dinners.. long December days hiking through snowy fields to find the perfect Christmas tree... turning off the lights and sitting by the fire.. so many quietly ordinary yet unordinary things....

you see, i loved my father deeply, and his pushing me away like he did cut deep, and so i came into knowing my deep angst, my ontological insecurity... i never wonder why i respond so emotionally to the James Joyce short story, "The Dead"... so acutely have I always been aware of the separation we feel, in our anything but ordinary existence...

but I ramble.. i do that often.. deeply moved.. thoughts unspoken rustle and stir deep waters.. break the surfaace tension.. spreading ripples across my mind... and waves lap onto this pages...ordinary page.. tabla rasa.. until thought gives form and it is no longer ordinary..

so, i was saying..

bereft of my father's support, emotionally, mentally, I left home at 17 --- but, i never stopped loving my father deeply and intensely ... and the next part of my life was anything but ordinary... and anything but good..

in spite of this, i still learned many new and wonderful things, met many beautiful souls, attended schools, became a craftsman, a weaver of fine woolen goods, a sometime poet, a half-*** guitarist, a lover of hiking in my beloved Appalachian mountains, always a lover of the finest things in this old world..music, music is the expression of the soul's heartbeat...

...and love...oh, love... the highest grace mortals can ever achieve... love...

i began as a child, raised in the church, on my lifelong spiritual quest...and as happens very often with people like myself, deeply spiritual souls .. i soon was disenfranchised with organized religion, and began my search outside that ordinary realm where so many take refuge, find comfort, blind faith..

yet, deep inside, i have carried the one message of the new testament -- god is love....

i came to understand that growing spiritually has nothing to do with ordinary religion...and so i left that behind as i ventured further along my way, leaving the ordinary path behind....

i've journeyed far in distance and in mind, in body and soul.. from church to spiritualistic paths.. to Hindu mysticism.. meditation.. devotion.. agnosticism.. and in recent years more Zen.. yet always with pure love in my
heart, bright beacon that keeps me from diving into the abyss.. love always calls me back...

I recognized at an early age that the path I chose was always going to be hard...and it has been very hard..i have stumbled many times..fallen..bruised and battered.. but never beaten...i'll never give up

never give up dreams.. never give up love..

and now, recently, an amazing very unordinary thing has happened to me...

from out of the blue...

love reached out to me from around the world

love moved me like never before

no ordinary love (as if love may ever be ordinary!)

pure, absolute love

love which has moved me higher than ever

and i am come full circle to where i began so may years ago... learning to live life with love...

i see myself standing in front of me now, myself at 17, and I wish I could tell that 17 year old, you already know all that i ever truly needed to know

that the life lived in love

truly lived in love, with love, for love, all love, pure absolute love, filled with love,

will never be ordinary.. ever...

and is the only life i can imagine

and life is a miracle

every day is a miracle

every day is so very unordinary

there has never ever been a day like it before

and there will never ever be one like it again


I'd like to leave you with these words...

from ancient Sanskrit...

"look to this day ... for yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision ... but today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope."

Answer 2

I try to do everything out of the ordinary. Ordinary is so boring, right now I'm learning how to identify flowers, I should get back to doing that actaully. Ciao

Answer 3

I'm anything but ordinary.

Answer 4

I do many MANY things out of the ordinary... My family even says... if the group goes left, I go right... I do not follow the norm. But it works well for me.

Answer 5

well if you'r speaking about my ordinary, it's pretty extreme, and therefore if i were to do anyhting out of my ordinary it would mean, the stuff i'm gonna do will either be boring or just lame....so u have to specify what is the ordinary you'r speaking about for instance......if it's getting up every day and doing the same stuff over and over or is it for an extreme person something out of his ordinary?

Answer 6

All the time! I try to stay as far away from ordinary as possible to prevent boredom.

Answer 7

i like doing something extra ordinary. u can learn alot more than u know by doing so. u r never bored of something

Answer 8

I got two piercings in each ear the other day (does that count? lol)

I try to do things out of the ordinary but man, i'm SO boring.

I only wish i were half as spontaneous as my imagination.

Answer 9

That is where life begins
Life is doing things out of the things done before

Answer 10

conformists are not usually high achievers.better to be a lion for a day, than a sheep all your life.

Answer 11

yea like trying to blow your pic up real big... that's out of the ordinary... bet it's not you!!