"Comparison is (often) the thief of joy" hits the same spot as Paul's famous advice to his young mentee: 'Contentment with godliness brings much gain'.
I loved the celebration of 'the ordinary' in this piece and was reminded of a speech I heard in the the early 1980s on "The Seths of our world". Seth was the 3rd and often overlooked son of Eve and Adam. The speech celebrated all the "Seth's": nurses who work long hours for low pay but heal, bus and train drivers who get 1000s of passengers safely and on time to their destinations, sewage works employees who 'get the job gone', single mothers, cashiers who give correct change a 1000 times a day, 'bus boys and women ' clearing our restaurant tables...'.
At the moment my Not For Marks activities are baking (about two months), gardening (three years; plants still struggling) and an art workshop once a month. By now the teacher understands I am there for the doing, the quality is incidental.
Your comment reminded me of a post from Andy Squyres that I loved.
"You are not special. You are a regular person with a job and a daily life. You are not a history maker. You have a destiny but it’s a regular one. You will never be a household name. You are not a revolution. You do not hold the line. You won’t win the argument. You won’t be in the ministry but if you find someday that you are, don’t count on being successful. You will find yourself living in the middle of a temporary kingdom and you will plant a garden. The garden you plant will not be an idealized, romanticized kind. It will be the kind where your lack of a green thumb will frustrate you for the first few years, where the reality of weeds and pests and ill conceived irrigation systems will force you to surrender some of your original assumptions about the universe. You will be abased and you will abound. Make sure you know how to do both. You will have one or two friends. Let them encourage you with candy bars and Mt. Dew. Some of your days will be wonderful but most of them will be boring. Never mind that. There is nothing like a boring day for being alive and thanking God."
Yet again you capture it so perfectly into words!!! This theme has gone round and round in various conversations lately (often around kids sports 🤪). There is a quote I read ages ago that often springs to mind along the lines of "its ok to have an ordinary life" and actually its great to have an ordinary life filled with amatuer joys connecting you to more ordinary people and ordinary places with their amateur joys... I'm often struck that when one has a hobby - so often that information is met with a 'but you could sell this!!' - it is a moment I take much joy is responding with a resounding "oh no - I have no interest in that thanks!"
Becky! I love this! So so true. Spoken like a true amateur. Why would I want to commercialise something that brings me joy. It would just complicate it!
As an aside, have you watched the old Australian classic The Castle. I love it. so funny. And one of the things the main character does upon eating his wife's bang average meals day after day is turn to her and say, 'you could sell it!'. Kind of an adoring irony there. X
I really liked this and laughed out loud at 'You could sell this' because you brought to mind a gathering I attended recently amongst whom was a very brash, loud in every way, ostentatious, overly dressed with bling young person. (I'm in my 70s so most people are 'young' to me). When I asked someone who the person was I was looked at with astonishment: this was a famous influencer! I had to humiliatingly admit I did not know what an influencer was and how could someone (with no more education than an very average RSA matric) be a super affluent "influencer" of anything.
I later checked out the influencer's 'work'. Forgive the response but as a human, and ordinary citizen on this planet I felt something akin to shame that we were applauding such activity. Everything ordinary was degraded by the influencer, only "success", the next new thing was of value.
Loved 'not for marks'. Freeing! It was evocative of a couple of columns I enjoyed from Fr Richard Rohr on the dangers of striving for perfection, See https://cac.org/daily-meditations/releasing-any-need-for-perfection/ and https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-heresy-of-perfection/
Thanks for these. I like Richard Rohr. Will look them up!
I wondered how a Presbytarian might cope with St Francis ! But had a feeling in your case it would be pretty well.
"Where beauty begins and brilliance resides'" could be the title of the your corpus of work.!
"Comparison is (often) the thief of joy" hits the same spot as Paul's famous advice to his young mentee: 'Contentment with godliness brings much gain'.
I loved the celebration of 'the ordinary' in this piece and was reminded of a speech I heard in the the early 1980s on "The Seths of our world". Seth was the 3rd and often overlooked son of Eve and Adam. The speech celebrated all the "Seth's": nurses who work long hours for low pay but heal, bus and train drivers who get 1000s of passengers safely and on time to their destinations, sewage works employees who 'get the job gone', single mothers, cashiers who give correct change a 1000 times a day, 'bus boys and women ' clearing our restaurant tables...'.
It is profoundly OK to be a Seth.
This article really spoke to me. Some of the kindest, nicest people I know are ordinary.
I completely agree.
At the moment my Not For Marks activities are baking (about two months), gardening (three years; plants still struggling) and an art workshop once a month. By now the teacher understands I am there for the doing, the quality is incidental.
Your comment reminded me of a post from Andy Squyres that I loved.
"You are not special. You are a regular person with a job and a daily life. You are not a history maker. You have a destiny but it’s a regular one. You will never be a household name. You are not a revolution. You do not hold the line. You won’t win the argument. You won’t be in the ministry but if you find someday that you are, don’t count on being successful. You will find yourself living in the middle of a temporary kingdom and you will plant a garden. The garden you plant will not be an idealized, romanticized kind. It will be the kind where your lack of a green thumb will frustrate you for the first few years, where the reality of weeds and pests and ill conceived irrigation systems will force you to surrender some of your original assumptions about the universe. You will be abased and you will abound. Make sure you know how to do both. You will have one or two friends. Let them encourage you with candy bars and Mt. Dew. Some of your days will be wonderful but most of them will be boring. Never mind that. There is nothing like a boring day for being alive and thanking God."
To read the full thing go here; https://www.instagram.com/p/DX9S6Z1ObI9/
Yet again you capture it so perfectly into words!!! This theme has gone round and round in various conversations lately (often around kids sports 🤪). There is a quote I read ages ago that often springs to mind along the lines of "its ok to have an ordinary life" and actually its great to have an ordinary life filled with amatuer joys connecting you to more ordinary people and ordinary places with their amateur joys... I'm often struck that when one has a hobby - so often that information is met with a 'but you could sell this!!' - it is a moment I take much joy is responding with a resounding "oh no - I have no interest in that thanks!"
Becky! I love this! So so true. Spoken like a true amateur. Why would I want to commercialise something that brings me joy. It would just complicate it!
As an aside, have you watched the old Australian classic The Castle. I love it. so funny. And one of the things the main character does upon eating his wife's bang average meals day after day is turn to her and say, 'you could sell it!'. Kind of an adoring irony there. X
Oh my gosh YES!! Haha - we say "Tell 'em he's dreamin'" all the time
I really liked this and laughed out loud at 'You could sell this' because you brought to mind a gathering I attended recently amongst whom was a very brash, loud in every way, ostentatious, overly dressed with bling young person. (I'm in my 70s so most people are 'young' to me). When I asked someone who the person was I was looked at with astonishment: this was a famous influencer! I had to humiliatingly admit I did not know what an influencer was and how could someone (with no more education than an very average RSA matric) be a super affluent "influencer" of anything.
I later checked out the influencer's 'work'. Forgive the response but as a human, and ordinary citizen on this planet I felt something akin to shame that we were applauding such activity. Everything ordinary was degraded by the influencer, only "success", the next new thing was of value.
Thanks for your sanity.