The Extraordinary Act of Being Ordinary

Pre-pandemic, I was high octane and striving to be good, do good, learn a lot, and tend to others. In my ordinary days, I strived to be extraordinary.

When the pandemic hit, my high-octane nature remained intact. I adapted quickly and filled my time with new ways of working; learning; staying in relationships; being vigilant about public health; doubling down on personal equity work; designing workshops on weekends and facilitating groups well into weekday evenings. In my striving, I thought I was thriving.

But six months into the pandemic, I realized I wasn’t thriving. In my efforts to be an extraordinary person in extraordinary times, I was subordinating my ordinary humanity, abandoning myself to heal the world.

Extraordinary Air Quality

In September 2020, the air quality index in Portland, Oregon was over 500—unbreathable, full of toxins, and beyond hazardous. In the hard stop of deadly air quality, I started to feel off. Really off. I stopped doing anything. I became withdrawn, disconnected, fearful, and exhausted. I had no more energy for Zoom connection calls. I was barely exercising. I was lucky to work more than an hour without plopping down on the couch and staring at the wall.

The only energy I could muster was reading a book by Buddhist practitioner, Sebene Selassie, You Belong: A Call for Connection. The book focuses on love and connection—to our communities, to those we struggle with, to the planet, but most of all, to ourselves. Drawing on centuries-old Buddhist teachings, Selassie posits that if we want to belong to the world, we must first belong to ourselves. The pollutants (my word, not hers) of greed, anger, and delusion draw us further away from ourselves, which in turn, disconnects us from everything else. Consequently, disconnection causes our suffering. Selassie’s wisdom and the hazardous smog outside compelled me to examine the pollutants within me. I then asked myself some big questions:

• How was my desire to be extraordinary disconnecting me from what’s wholly ordinary and most human about me?

• How do I want to live my life? And what does living well mean?

• How might I liberate myself from the toxins of a high-octane life?

Almost two years passed before I’d figure out how to answer these questions.

When the Going Gets Tough, Make a Rubric

Growing up, popular culture was a form of child-rearing in my family. My parents were largely absent when it came to teaching life lessons, and I often learned about society’s values from television and films, like the Superman franchise. In the movie Superman II, Superman—a white man bestowed with extraordinary powers to save the world from evil—decides he wants to be ordinary. He chooses love over superhuman strength, relationship over individuality. Through a dramatic process, Superman fully morphs into his secret identity, Clark Kent, and tries to live life with his love interest, Lois Lane, as an ordinary human. What he realizes, though, is that the world is falling prey to evil forces, and his ordinariness is saving no one. I saw Superman II when I was a young child, and its messages were imprinted on my young brain: be a standout, be superhuman, be like this extraordinary white guy who braves evil forces on his own, give and do and strive; ordinariness won’t save the world.

My therapist once told me everything is tolerable until it becomes intolerable. My way of coping with the difficulties of life was striving to be extraordinary, subordinating my needs for the sake of others. I believed that being high-octane about everything was a badge of courage, of resilience. But while I was busy trying to be better and do better, I was feeling no better than when surrounded by toxic air. In early 2022, my big questions from 2020 were still lingering, tumult (personal and professional) was roiling around me, and my desire to be extraordinary started to feel intolerable.

Then I did what I do best: I made a rubric.

I needed to examine where my extraordinary actions were a form of subordination. I wanted to define what it would feel like to be liberated from this conditioning. My rubric looked like this:

I started assessing the ways I was striving to be extraordinary, and I examined my social conditioning, the patterns I was raised with (implicitly and explicitly) and how those patterns were like toxins in my system. Each day for about three months, I tracked where I was on this rubric. At the end of each day, I chose a moment that stood out and placed myself somewhere along the rubric’s continuum. I asked myself what was contributing to this feeling so that I could gather some data on the root causes of my actions. This level of consciousness-raising made it abundantly clear what was polluting me: Extraordinariness. While I was busy trying to save the world and be superhuman, extraordinariness was destroying me.

This process forced me to face life head on, choosing love of self over abandonment, liberation over subordination, humanity over perfectionism—connection over disconnection.

Extraordinary Ordinariness

“What miraculous moments are you missing because you aren’t resting?”

-Tricia Hersey

In my reflections on these past few years, I learned it wasn’t the pandemic, or the toxic air, or the extraordinary circumstances I was thrust into that upended me. It was the worry that I would be like Superman when he sheds his powers: someone who thinks that extraordinary is the only way to make a difference in the world.

I no longer use the rubric I created, but I do an internal check when something feels off, when I feel like I’m lapsing into old habits. I also do an internal check when I feel good, when my integrity and liberation are well intact. I feel more free, more connected to myself as I deprogram and downshift from my high-octane existence. The path of liberation doesn’t always feel good, but it feels more true and beautiful. While life continues to present challenges, I don’t approach them anymore from the place of extraordinary subordination, but rather, extraordinary ordinariness.

On October 7, I created a holiday for myself. I didn’t celebrate it. I didn’t do anything grandiose or even let others know it was happening. Its purpose was to mark a transition: to honor the extraordinary act of being ordinary.

How Will You Honor Your Ordinariness?

Superman chose wrong when he left the ordinary path to become extraordinary again. He should have read Selassie’s book. Superman abandoned love. He sacrificed intimacy and faced the evils of the world alone, disconnected from others and himself. Extraordinary individualism won’t save us. Love will, especially the love that keeps us in relationship to ourselves and reminds us how human we are.

The past few years have called us to summon strength, courage, extraordinary skills in extraordinary times. But how has that extraordiness destroyed us? What is worth celebrating in the ordinary days and ordinary moments, connected to self and one another in a way that’s intimate, full of love, fully human? What does your path to liberation look like? What is the rubric you would make to become free?