March 19, 2006

The Typology of Ordinariness

Continuing with the amnesia theme I touched upon in one of my earlier posts, I sometimes feel that there are either so many things that I didn’t know of earlier or so many things that I have come to realize only now. How it has come to be this way, I know not!!

Not so long ago, I was typing a report into my computer when I realized that I was not looking at the screen at all. I sat up amazed, and said, “Whoa! This is cool.”

The other day, this phenomenon reached its grand finale. What had started roughly 12 years ago with my typing on the computer for the first time, culminated in my being able to type by just looking at the screen and my fingers converting my stream of thoughts into appropriate array of words deftly and effortlessly. This surely was a wow moment.

The next couple of days, I spent bragging about my new-found talent. However, much to my chagrin, nobody around seemed visibly impressed. Apparently, this was no unique achievement. But that didn’t take away its uniqueness for me. I still felt on top of the world and wore a smile of satisfaction for a couple of more days.

Later I realized an interesting truth about life. Not that I hadn’t known it since the time I was a kid, but the context I found myself in, gave it a new meaning, or put more artistically, a new rendition.

The most ordinary things can acquire inexplicable extraordinariness in your otherwise uninteresting lives by virtue of they being borne out of circumstances that are unique to you, and vice-versa.

It is much like learning how to ride a bicycle, falling in love, experiencing parenthood, and savoring the joy of giving – all emotions experienced a gazillion times before by several different people. But the fact that they are happening to you, make them oh-so-special!!

It's like the world rediscovering itself over and over again, and the very process of this constant rediscovery making the ordinary seem truly extraordinary!!

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