The Joy of the Mundane and the Irritation of the Everyday

If you are unaware, my sister is on a one year mission, where she only eats things that are made from scratch. I am thoroughly enjoying reading about her journey from afar. Today, however, I had the inordinate joy of joining her as she cooked a few loaves of bread and some cookies. Of course, my contribution was encouraging and watching (and at least one of those I did poorly).

As I encouraged her to contribute to her blog with the story of bread and/or cookies, she told me that her adventures in cooking of the commonplace were not worthy of writing. As much as I may try to convince her otherwise, I really ran out of good arguments. The fact is that writing is most interesting when you have a story to tell. While this seems obvious, I also realize that we have a definite issue with this in our lives.

We tend to undervalue the prosaic. We tend to not enjoy the journey. We tend to not recognize the greatness of the moment we are having. I'm not necessarily referring to enjoying each moment as it comes in this blog, but rather, I am advocating that we should see that some of the things we do each day are extraordinary. Even if what we are doing would not make a good story, there is value in recognizing that each day of our life is outstanding.

We need to see that drama is not necessary for success in a given day. If we recognize that the things we see as mundane as reasonably joyful, we will love our lives quite a bit more. It is simply extraordinary that my sister can take an array of nondescript ingredients and turn it into something as tasty as bread or yeast-free cookies. She sees it as a procession of the everyday, and I see it as amazing.

I think that the danger of not doing this is that we begin to become irritated with our everyday lives. I have had interactions with people recently who are so convinced that what they are going through is not God's will that they are attempting to get others to augment what they are doing. I've had discussions with several people who are thinking divorce is a viable option for them, all because they are failing to see the wonder and amazement in the everyday static.

While I concede that it is possible to fall somewhere in the middle, I think overall those who fail to find joy in the mundane begin to find irritation in the everyday. And I think my sister does see the joy in cooking with weird ingredients, she just doesn't want to blog about it, and for that, the world is saddened by the lack of top notch writing!