I want for you to understand that it is okay to be ordinary. I would rather you live an ordinary, even dull, life with true contentment, than to be brilliant and full of pain and sadness.
You see, when I was growing up it was popular to tell each child that she or he was special. We were encouraged to dream big, to have plans, to aim for the stars. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that. But if everyone wants to be special, exceptional even, who will they be more special than? Do you need to think everyone else is less important to feel good about yourself? What happens when you wake up one day and realize that you are not really exceptional? You have an ordinary sort of life, a pedestrian sort of job and you are just like everyone else.
Being told that you are special, unique and different won’t prepare you for the stark reality of grown up life, with bills, and budgets, and the need to do what has to be done and even deny yourself several pleasures, and dreams even, in order to get by.
I do think you are special. I have loved you intensely since the moment I saw you, and even before. I think every hiccup and smile is remarkable and I tell everyone about it. I spend most of my day thinking about you in one way or another. But everyone else has a mother who thinks they are special too, or they should. And if the only difference between you and the kid down the street is that your mother thinks you are special and theirs does not then it is a sad thing, and not something that should delineate how your life turns out compared to theirs. Though it often does.
What I want for you though is not brilliance, or intensity, or bright shining stardom. I want for you to live well in the “middle times”: the happy ordinary days that exist in between epics. I want for you to learn contentment, with much or with little. I want you to know that who you are is more important than what you do and that even the most ordinary life, lived well, can be extraordinary.
I know that this in itself won’t be enough for you. We all need a reason to live the way we do, one convincing enough to make us act. So I hope that you know that you can change the world.
I hope you know that learning how to live in joy, to be content and at peace, to love, to serve others in love, will be the way you bring that change.
But here’s another secret my dears, one learned well from Hobbits. It is those who know how to live well and joyfully in the middle times that have what it takes to rise to the challenges and epics that overtake ordinary life on occasion. If you have not the strength for ordinary life than you will not have it for adventures or extraordinary circumstances either.
Why would you give someone more responsibility when they are failing to handle what they already have to do well? Be faithful in what you are given. Rejoice and be glad with what you are given. Sometimes when we learn to do that more is added, and your thirst for adventure will be satisfied.