the Path to Freedom: Ordinary or Extraordinary?

I read a meditation this morning that encouraged you to enjoy the ordinary in the sense that it’s the ordinary, the mundane, the routine, that we all long for once it’s gone.  But until that moment when the ordinary is not longer available, we under-appreciate, under-value, and often ignore its preciousness.  I remember when I was tired of being in a relationship a few years ago.  I felt that it was ordinary, uneventful, unexciting and therefore useless to me at that point in my life.  I assumed and imagined that singleness (a.k.a. freedom in my mind) was where my happiness could be found.  On the contrary I had always desired relationship, friendship, companionship because it had been so invisible growing up, even through high school and college in many ways.  I was tired of being alone or maybe lonely but at that point even being in a relationship felt lonely and empty.  What friendships I had were seemingly superficial or temporary or situational – not to mention the fact that healthy, mature, balanced relationships were never really role modeled or experienced by the people around me, and if they were, I was so tormented by the demons of my past that I couldn’t welcome them in, participate in them, or learn how to have them.  It wasn’t the outside but the inside that needed alteration or deeper observation.  Instead of remembering what and why I entered the relationship, I sought what I thought were greener pastures.  I quickly learned that it wasn’t the solitary singleness that would bring me freedom but singleness of mind and purpose along with an ability to see the extraordinarily small but effective ways my relationship was meeting my needs and healing my heart.  I needed to free myself versus asking my partner to free me, but of course, in freeing myself of that relationship I was forced to see that freedom was something I had to give myself.  This freedom was a hard fought journey though because of its foreign nature but in the end, success was sweet and now I have the relationship I had always wanted.  No compromises and no delusions – raw and real with the power to soothe and heal.

            So what in your life has lost its luster?  Do you have what you thought you wanted but find no satisfaction in its acquisition?  What would it be like if you no longer had that person, that job, that house, that child, that responsibility? What would you miss?  Don’t rush.  Sit and see.  How do you know that freedom doesn’t come from within the responsibility versus without it?  Sometimes it takes a change of scenery, a retreat, a selling of it all and simplifying to know what you truly want and need.  Sometimes it only takes a change in perspective – a few minutes of quiet personal reflection to know.  Can you trust that if you let it go then it will return to you, eventually, if it’s meant to be?  Can you trust that there exists a perfect timing and perfect nature of everything in God’s Universe, which has been entrusted to you?  So what is extraordinary versus ordinary now?  How can you give those extraordinary parts of your life the gratitude and attention they deserve today?