I'm from there. And a thousand memories flood into you at once. Then by some miracle of human understanding w're able to pick up on all that means... Without any ability to put it into words. We break it down into small questions asking to lessen the vast array of it all. 'What's it like living there?' ...It is everything. It is all of me. No matter what I become. 'What was it like?' And you answer... niether fully grasping the depths of the other. Content with the waves' surface. You share - the sun glints off of it. (A spark of) Connection. Little is it realized, this obscures the view.
'The everyday' is something we live through rather than a concept we spend much - if any time contemplating. It is the familiar lying all around us. Our habits, our routines, our comfort zone in all things.
Though I don't believe it ever actually escapes our notice. Strangely, we are as acutely aware of the ordinary mundanity of the everyday just as it entirely alludes us.
And I'm far from the only one to have noticed this. In searching for what exactly 'the everyday' is I've found a compelling tension in its very definition. It isn't a moment in time or just as simple as our mannerisms or tendencies, instead, it is marked by its' ambiguity. An inability to pin it down. As though the everyday must remain incorporeal to be considered itself.
It speaks to an intimate complexity which is necessary for our species. But why would supposed simplicity of regular life contain something so abstract? And why is it something we neglect to think about?
Small Moments Define Us...
Change is constant. It is one of the only things we can rely on without contradiction... time continues. We exist in its' passing. Though it does raise certain unique challenges for us. we question and wonder about how we use the time we are given. We ask what maatters. If we matter. In that searching we tiee ourselves up in uncooperative concepts with meaning and purpose.
Our daily lives exist amidst those great unknowns. Our day to day may act as a security blanket muting the stark nature of these concerns but remaining within them could eventually highlight existential anxieties.
We may begin to feels stagnant. As thought the world was turning without us.
So if we cannot defy change even if we tried resulting ina kind of sickness what is missing from our idea of 'the everyday?'
Well, there's more to an understated life than being stubbornly averse to change. We partake in activities, get togethers, and seek various forms of excitement.
\it is through our general senseof experience we break up the ordinary. Grand adventures, vacations, going to a concert, or other such opportunities. Experiences are events ourside the ordinary. They are its' antitheesis, aren't they? They stand out in our memor for us to look back on.
Are experiances limited only to the extraordinary? We live every moment of our lives, after all. Should the quiet ones be of any less value?
There's also what we are tasked with...
Do they not define us, in their way? A step in one direction or another changing the trajectory of our everyday in increments. Until eventually is' angle branches out a great degree from its origin.
A drastic shift would not be necessary. And a few choices leading to big momentous occurrence cannot have any less impact than the magnitude of decisions made in everyday life...
What makes any experience so important? Why do we reach for more than our routines?
As human beings, as living creatures... I think we have been given but one task in actuality. That is to experience. For to experience is to be. We affirm ourselves through our actions.
And though smaller moments lack a certain breadth, they dive much deeper. They can only be conveyed is specificity. With the gravity that comes with intimacy. It is then that you hagve fulfilled your purpose. You have experienced.
You have become someone.