A Life of Ordinary Little Pleasures: Delights of the Ordinary No. 18

A letter in a modern day mailbox.

Are you there, God? It’s me, Margret. I am in my new bedroom but I still have the same bed. It is so quiet here at night – nothing like the city. I see shadows on my wall and hear these funny creaking sounds. It’s scary, God! Even though my father says all houses make noises and the shadows are only trees. I hope he knows what he’s talking about! I met a girl today. Her name’s Nancy. She expected me to be grown up. I think she was disappointed. Don’t you think it’s time for me to start growing, God? If you could arrange it I’d be very glad. Thank You.

-A letter to God by Margret from the book Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret By Judy Blume

When John McGregor, a noted novelist, requested strangers to send him letters in the post, he must have never imagined that he’d continue to receive them until three years later. It’s almost ten years to this project of his and I am not sure if he still gets letters or not!

But this is what he says about letters,

“The wonderful thing about email is its immediacy… A letter, by contrast, always arrives from the past. There is a waiting – a forced patience – built into the mechanics. You wait for a letter to arrive. You wait for a reply… in both space and time: I am sitting at the kitchen table; I am in the garden, under the apple tree; I can hear the children in the bath upstairs and will soon have to fetch them. In that sense, a letter is more “composed” than an email.”

We have a real life to live, which isn’t smooth and fluffy as a cushion. It is harshly bushy and more formidable than we imagined while growing up. So, when I grew up into adulthood reading letters from my mother- in those dizzy hot summers of Delhi (where I went to work and study) her letters were a cool breeze, especially in times when I shrunk into deep distress modes to keep up with the fast-running culture of city life, her handwritten letters made me plug back to my home, my siblings and they carried in them ample of herself. Even when I made my first e-mail ID, my mother was oblivious to these technological strategies, and her letters came to me just like they did, in mail, passed to me by the postman!

So in the heat of everything and escaping to modern hobbies of sharp-shooting entertainment I want to write letters to you through Substack, in this hope that we can go back to decades-old habits that can rejuvenate our already hammered spirits. Because letters are a stretch to hold conversations that are deep and devoted.

If you know half of life’s beauty lies in its ordinariness, in its colloquial incidents whose length and proportions cannot be sliced, flattened, or managed into fine categories. Thus, It won’t be long before we pull up our socks and reconnect with more sanguinity and lead life in some ordinary ways away from the contemporary ways. Because the ordinary pleasures in our lives are one of the most extraordinary spectrum. They are these places which will lead us to know that in our lives we are embarking on the journey to discover the nuances of “an extra helping of ordinary” as Maria Popova puts it.

“I’ve become particularly fascinated by the extraordinary part of “extraordinary ability.” At first glance, it implies exceptional, above-and-beyond-the-ordinary ability. But it seems to also mean, rather, the very opposite — extra-ordinary as in possessing an extra helping of ordinary.” Maria Popova

The Ripples of Ordinary Pleasures

We bypass a great deal of ordinary things that can create shelves in our hearts where we can place small memories and tiny laughs and smiles. These are little Renaissance moments. 

Sometimes life is lived between drinking our breakfast to pursuing the green traffic lights and avoiding the bumpy roads. We forget to create little hops and leaps and even forget to hum a song beneath the scorching sun. Because we are oblivious to how highly important we are in the big scheme of things. And when we are tightly squirming our vagaries of the world into little junctions of comfort for our own self, it is kind of boring for us to believe that in undertaking ordinary everyday somethings, we can create small renaissances in our lives, compounding in the world! Yet, It is so much possible and potentially lovely to do that! Like writing letters. Or many other mini pleasures can have simple heartfelt ways to spark in us those ripples.

“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.” – Confucius.

What do these small ripples look like?

Little ripples of pleasure are like:

• the tasty residue left on your fingers after eating masala chips,
• like completing a long Google form without missing a required field, on the first attempt, or
• like sticking one leg out from underneath the blanket and feeling just right,
• removing the entire shell off of a boiled egg in one try, or
• like waking up, checking the clock and seeing that you still have plenty of sleep time,
• and even laughing at something so hard that you cry or, laughing so hard that no noise comes out!

If any one of these things, like such, happens, you’re creating small ripples or ordinary something!

How to Create these Ordinary pleasures?

What is the source of such simple joy in the ordinary recurrences of daily life? From what I heard the legend is to have a deep sense of attention in our immediate world, an honest curiosity, that time heals and as Victor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychologist, puts it, “You always have the capacity to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

When we landed in Mumbai one thing we decided and implemented to a T was to offload everything we didn’t need. The choice we had to make was between our needs and desires. We worked on this heavenly principle of not holding on to things, hence as we exercised our choices we were mindful of discerning between the clutter which was holding us versus the memories attached to things.

“Memory is so crazy! It’s like we’ve got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.”

— Haruki Murakami

Some things are dear to our hearts because they are not mere things they are cache’ of memories. Hence, we made a box of memories – belongings like albums and treasured objects passed on to us by our parents. When we want to reminiscence we just open our treasure box like a child and cherish our good old days. This exercise has left us deeply free. We are removing the weight of things that are tied to making us feel validated. And it is such a wonderful process of feeling light. 

The challenge-

We faced this challenge to throw or to hold on to things. That was a crucial step. We decided to let things go if we didn’t need them. We let ourselves have space for more ordinary moments than things occupying our drawers and minds.

As a person I prefer aesthetically taking care of my space and realised lesser things don’t mean less aesthetic. I keep the space empty so I can weave in a lot of innocence and don’t have to rely on filling it with things.

I hope we do not give up so soon on ordinary cheers yet. When we are grumpy with ourselves and the world around us we have a choice to make, to make it better and live in it. Because we may not know those times when we have to deal with the heat that we didn’t create. So, while we create our successes and empires and bank balances we also strive to live to pay attention to the little ways of the world- goodness is a choice to be made each day. 

So here’s wishing you moments of ordinary pleasures and as your weekly curator the faves from the past week: 

To watch: Watch this YouTube by the School of Life. Maybe you will come face to face with pleasures of ordinary kinds. I hope also that it can let your feet wiggle and inspire you to create deep stretches of de-stressing.

Kindness is pretty alluring and even contagious. It spreads. This is my second fave video to watch.

To discover: If you enjoy exploring new thoughts outside your typical bubble, looking for fresher voices in your reading list, and needing a respite from the banality of your social media feed then you are like me. The Sample is a newsletter-finding portal which is designed to amplify independent writers about whom you haven’t heard already. You can set a few topics you’re interested in, and then each day The Sample picks a different article to send you. When you get one you like, you can subscribe to the author’s newsletter in a single click. Easy as pie. Sign up here.

To contemplate: The Jonah Complex is the fear of being better than we hoped for. The name of it emanated from the Biblical prophet Jonah when he was called by God to go to Nineveh and convict them of their sins so they repent, instead, he fled.  

If not for God we all have been driven by this complex. Why do we do it? The common human reaction is regression, not progression. When there is some sort of an upheaval in the usual rhythm like making big decisions on career change, moving to a new place, or finding a new vocation, the common response is fleeing, running away from the responsibility, fearing that the new life will be too much for us to handle.

Abraham Maslow writes: “So often we run away from the responsibilities dictated (or rather suggested) by nature, by fate, even sometimes by accident, just as Jonah tried—in vain—to run away from his fate.” 

To end:A poem that inspires to pay attention to our regular ordinary pleasures. A beautiful read.

In Case I Forget to Say It Enough

– By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Thank you for this day made
of wind and rain and sun and the scent
of old-fashioned lilacs. Thank you

for the pond and the slippery tadpole
and the wild iris that opened beside the pond
last week, so pale, so nearly purple,

their stems already flagged and bent.
Thank you for the yellow morels hiding in the field grass,
the ones we can only see when we are already

on our knees. And thank you for the humming
that rises out of the morning as if mornings
are simply reasons to hum. What a gift,

this being alive, this chance to encounter the world.
What a gift, this being a witness to spring—
spring in everything. Spring in the way

that we greet each other. Spring in the way the golden eagle
takes to the thermals and spirals up to where
we can barely see the great span of its wings.

Spring in the words we have known
since our births. Like glory. Like celebrate.

P.S. With the current political climate, I feel guilty about allowing myself to feel so much more restful. Yet, I reckon in proper times we have to strive to make them adequately triumphed so that when things turn gruesome we may at least be left with little goodness and love for others. Because, in those difficult times these ordinary things called hugs and love, will turn extraordinary- a rarity in times of wars and political turmoil.

Wishing you a life less stressful and a little more extraordinary.

-Anugrah