<\/p>\n
Ordinary Moments, Ordinary Days<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the number of moments that take our breath away.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n I have been thinking about that particular aphorism lately. I wonder if our lives really are measured by the number of breaths we take or even by the number of moments that take our breath away. Or are our lives measured by the ordinary days? Are not our lives more about those plain old ordinary days \u2013 than about the number of breaths we take or the number of moments that take our breath away?<\/span><\/p>\n The moments that take our breath away are certainly wonderful moments to be sure. Moments that take our breath away might be some magnificent milestone or a celebration or some other important events in our lives \u2013 like the birth of a child, falling in love for the first time, or watching a child graduate from college. They are the smiles and the joys of special moments, frozen in time. The moments that take our breath away are moments that will become treasured and special memories we can cherish throughout our lives. But will we measure our lives by the number of moments that take our breath away?<\/span><\/p>\n We spend most of our lives living ordinary days. Those uneventful days which pass from one to the next without fanfare and without us taking much notice of them. It\u2019s Monday and the next thing you know it\u2019s Friday. Those ordinary hours and days pass and we hardly notice them.<\/span><\/p>\n These are the normal days of our lives. These are not moments that take our breath away. We work, eat, sleep, raise our children, and go about the business of living and we give these ordinary days no special notice: Monday turns into Tuesday and Tuesday to Wednesday and life goes on.<\/span><\/p>\n The ordinary days of our lives are the most important. Because those ordinary, typical days define our lives \u2013 not the moments that take our breath away. What we do on those \u201ceverydays\u201d is the chronicle of our lives. The journal of our journey is mostly written on those days. Most of the days we spend on earth will be typical, routine, even at times boring days. But, they are important, because our lives will be measured by these routine days -and not the few extraordinary days that will come and go as we make our way through life. The routine things we do and the mundane days of our lives make us what we are. We are the sum of all those ordinary days. Ordinary days are the foundation upon which all of our lives are built.<\/span><\/p>\n We are not the sum of moments that take our breath away. We are not the sum of the number of breaths we take. We are what we are because of days like just like today.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at ordinary days. It seems to me that ordinary days are never really ordinary. Miracles are going on every day, everywhere, the sun shining; the flowers growing; the birds singing; the clouds billowing into majestic castles in the sky; the world traveling silently through the cosmos on its tireless journey around the sun- miracles all.<\/span><\/p>\n Even on the most ordinary of days, our lives are an integral part of everything going on around us. So however mundane and typical a day may seem, the one thing it is not is an ordinary day. Each day of our lives, ordinary as they may seem, is special. We are alive and we are part of the universe. <\/span><\/p>\n We are all special. <\/span><\/p>\n Each day of each of our lives is unique and therefore special, no matter how unimportant or ordinary we may think we are. In the grand scheme, the greatest king who ever lived is no more important or less important than you.<\/span><\/p>\n So it is true that each of us is given the gift of life and that we all are given a finite number of breaths to take. If we\u2019re lucky we\u2019ll have some wonderful moments that will take our breath away. These treasured moments will become great memories for us and we will look back fondly upon them. <\/span><\/p>\n Yet, I think, it is the plain old ordinary days of our lives that are the most precious. They are the most special. The ordinary becomes extraordinary if you stop and think about how precious each day is.<\/span><\/p>\n Today I celebrate the ordinary, and I will savor the extraordinary. Yet I too, look forward to the moments that will take my breath away. I know though, that in the end, it will be the ordinary, mundane days that I will remember the most.<\/span><\/p>\n Those days long past when my kids came home from school; when I read the paper on the porch on a warm spring Saturday morning; when I watched a favorite movie on Saturday night; all the days I drove to work each morning and back home each night; spring and summer days when I mowed the lawn, drank iced tea, took a walk, or read a book.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m somehow certain that it will not be the moments that took my breath away that will define my life. It will be the boring, routine, and ordinary days that I will look back upon with the most affection. I know in my heart that when I reach those final days of my life, it will be the ordinary, typical, even the most boring days of my life that I will find myself yearning for the most.<\/span><\/p>\n I will remember snowy winter days when I cursed the cold, wished for warmer days, and hurried inside to get out of the bitter wind. I\u2019ll remember ordinary days when I sat at the dinner table, when my children were young, and watched them grow as we talked about ordinary things on ordinary days.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ll remember walks on beautiful warm spring days and walks on bitterly cold, winter days when the wind stabbed at my face like a thousand tiny icy daggers. I will remember taking my children to the park. I\u2019ll remember taking them to the movies. I\u2019ll remember coaching Little League baseball in an uncounted number of meaningless games that meant so much to the kids.<\/span><\/p>\n I will remember taking photographs of the autumn trees blazing under the nitrogen-blue skies of October. And, I\u2019ll remember lying on the warm spring grass taking photographs of tulips and daffodils. Those beautiful, splendidly arrayed icons of spring, never failed to remind me of the miracle of life, and life reborn. Though they were gentle reminders, they were especially profound after a long, cold, bitter winter.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ll remember my friends, my children, and my mistakes. I will, no doubt, have some, maybe many,\u00a0 regrets.<\/span><\/p>\n And, I might even remember, in passing, the moments that took my breath away.<\/span><\/p>\n But they will not define my life.<\/span><\/p>\n When I reach the final days of that final winter of my life, it is not the extraordinary days that I will recall. It will not be those moments that \u201ctook my breath away\u201d that I will remember. Instead, ironically, it will be all those wonderful, typical, ordinary, boring days that were the foundation of all that I was that I will wish to revisit. <\/span><\/p>\n In the final hours of our lives, of course, we will have no choice but to allow life to proceed to its ultimate conclusion. I’m sure it will be the plain, old, ordinary days of my life that will be the days I will remember most as I prepare to leave this world. It won’t be those moments that took my breath away.<\/span><\/p>\n Life is precious and even the most ordinary day is anything but ordinary. And, it seems to me that all is as it should be. I wouldn\u2019t think it could ever be any other way.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ordinary Moments, Ordinary Days “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the number of moments that take our breath away.\u201d I have been thinking about that particular aphorism lately. I wonder if our lives really are measured by the number of breaths we take or even by the number of moments\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29800"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29804,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29800\/revisions\/29804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}