Celebration of the ordinary

If I want to increase the rating of this newspaper column, the easiest thing to do is to say something controversial or outrageous. The more bizarre, the better. That’s the way to become popular today. I don’t have to work hard; to be notorious is enough. I might ‘sex it up’ a little. A reference to sex can shoot up sales of magazine, soap, car, color paint, mobile phone, jewelry, movie, book, anything. Or I might say something outrageous against someone. Notoriety can turn a person without talent into a celebrity overnight. In this generation, no one wants to be ordinary. Everyone wants to rise above the crowd and be celebrated. We don’t want to be normal. We want to be special. The world doesn’t bother what means we use to become famous. It doesn’t matter if we have to sell our dignity, our self-respect, our very soul for it. To become popular has become the ultimate goal.

Online social media like facebook provides platform for every ordinary person a kind of podium or a world audience. The stage is all yours. It reminds me of the movie The Truman Show, the only difference is that the hero in our case knows that he’s the hero. In the movie, Jim Carey did not know that he lives in a make-believe world and that his whole life is a television show. With more and more of reality TV shows, we have come to live as though our life itself is a show and we are the main star. We manage how we should be perceived with our facebook status updates and our profile information. On such flimsy grounds, we derive our dignity and self worth.

We are made to believe that we can be the next slumdog millionaire. In the talent search shows, it is shown again and again that ordinary people like you and me can become the next great sensation. The show anchor points finger at you through the TV screen and say, ‘you can be the next great star’. And you believe that somehow, somewhere, you have it in you to sweep the world off its feet. 

How stressful!!! How stressful it would be to keep up with such make-believe image that we try to project day in and day out. It’s a recipe to fall into a ‘celebrity mental breakdown’ if you like. Behind the images of happy-go-lucky, on-top-of-the-world lives that we see onscreen, so many celebs suffer mental depression, drug addiction, and disintegration of private lives. It is when accolades get into their heads and they can’t cope with the realities of life. 

The antidote to the pursuit of fame is to choose and celebrate the ordinary life. Let’s face it. There are millions of people all over the world who are as good as you and me. Chances are that with all the moves and tricks you pull to impress (gather as many Likes, to use facebook lingo), you might just not make the cut. To the restless wannabes, wise men say that in the rush to the top, it is told that there’s nothing up there. In the rat race, there is no reward at the finish line. The best things in life are in the ordinary everyday stuffs. Marilyn Thomsen says, ‘And while it takes courage to achieve greatness, it takes more courage to find fulfillment in being ordinary’. To go to work and come home on a usual day is a blessing. To find joy in the company of a friend over a cup of ordinary tea; to mind one’s own business and to work with our hands, as the Good Book says - These are precious gifts that we so often ignore. We remember heroes and great people. We draw inspiration from such people and their extraordinary acts. But they are few and far in between when we count all the days that pass us by. But the more important thing is to live the ordinary days well. ‘The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs’ (George Eliot). If you don’t have as much oomph factor, set-the-stage-on-fire stuff in you, or Nobel Prize-worthy piece of work, don’t bother. Just live on. Life itself is amazing.