7.07.2012

Ordinary People

My friend Scott wrote a fantastic post the other day about being ordinary.  In it, he recommends this article from the New York Times site.  In it, author Alina Tugend wades into the world of American Exceptionalism and how today's young people are being affected by the mentality that everyone must be exceptional.  She is, of course, responding to David McCullough, Jr.'s now wildly-famous commencement address.  In case you are one of the few (like me) who have not yet seen/heard it, here it is:



My favorite parts include the following maxim: "If everyone is special, no one is" and this bit of priceless advice, which I think has guided my own life and I hope will guide the lives of my children:
Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the species glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction.  Be worthy of your advantages, and read.  Read all the time, read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect.  Read as a nourishing staple of life.
There is much more good in this speech and in Tugend's article.  In particular, I connected with her use of George Eliot's Middlemarch, upon which I wrote my Honor's Thesis in college.  She quotes the last lines of that great book:
For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric 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.
And upon reading those words again, I was reminded of a passage from Les Miserables.  After several pages of listing the day-to-day happenings of 1817, most of which I did not understand, Hugo writes:
Such was the confused mass of the now-forgotten events that floated like flotsam on the surface of the year 1817.  History ignores almost all these minutiae: it cannot do otherwise; it is under the dominion of infinity.  Nonetheless, these details, which are incorrectly termed little - there being neither little facts in humanity nor little leaves in vegetation - are useful.  It is the features of the years that makes up the face of the century. (119)
Like my friend, I want an ordinary life.  I want my children to do what they love and believe in regardless of who sees them.  I want to live faithfully a hidden life.

6 comments:

  1. For a long time, I felt like I would be letting everyone down if I weren't extraordinary. If I didn't publish the book or get the PhD or get some awesome job.

    But I'm okay with ordinary. In fact, I'm happy with it.

    I owe you an email from forever ago (May, I believe?) about something you mentioned in the comments of my blog. You said you had an idea about writing? And poetry submissions? Let's talk!!

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    1. Oh, let's do talk! I'm about to get a post up for the poetry project, but our conversation is unrelated. Send me an email when you get the chance.

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  2. This is the kind of engagement I was hoping for when I started the blog and I am grateful. So glad you shared the video of the McCullough address, too, as I had not yet seen it. The quote you shared above about reading is definitely one to savor.

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    1. Yes!! Isn't that quote wonderful? It's particularly interesting because it is the same advice my graduate adviser gave to the most recent batch of UVA grads - READ! So glad reading is such a part of my - and my kids' - life. Wish I could have seen you yesterday. We need a nice long visit soon.

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  3. It's a beautiful post Sara. I remember those bits in Middlemarch and Les Miserables and while sometimes the desire for extraordinary is so ingrained in us I try to keep in mind that life should be extraordinary for ourselves, not for others. Though I do think that there is a distinction between complacency and ordinary.

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    1. Excellent point, Trish. By no means would I want to be complacent. I'm always striving for something, learning something, creating something. But contentment is so important, and it is something I believe has to be actively cultivated in kids. So, I try.

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