Nothing Is Ordinary

Experiencing wonder together

There’s a reason I call my Substack Nothing Is Ordinary. I remember being curious about everything as a child. Even now, the smallest pebble is wondrous to me. The sea is alive under the waters with ocean life but also with the vibration of the earth. At night, the stars seem to speak to me stories of my ancestors. I feel the full moon’s energy flowing in me on those bright nights that I can’t sleep, inviting me outside to commune with her.

My mother was a gardener, and I grew up planting seeds and watching them sprout through the earth and grow into colorful, fragrant blooms. I experienced life through my fingers, planting the seeds in the dirt, then later smelling the blooms when the breeze surrounded our yard with their scent, and making jam from the grapes of the vine over our patio. I learned that life was constantly transforming itself. Awe was (is) everywhere when you’re present to life.

Indeed, nothing is ordinary.

Yet all this was through my own experience. It wasn’t until I saw this quote posted by Adam Haver of

Certain Twilights

on

Maya C. Popa

Conscious Writers Collective, that it occurred to me a missing piece essential to wonder is shared by others.

"I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of being, magnify our sense of wonder, and wonder is our best means of loving the world more deeply."

--from The Marginalian, An Almanac of Birds

I recalled the time my son, about four years old, saw a monarch butterfly for the first time. He approached it after it landed on a nearby branch. It remained still until his nose was almost touching it. Then he turned to me and said, “This is the most beautiful flower I’ve ever seen!” Until then, I had not really SEEN a monarch butterfly’s colors up close or noticed the web of veins in its fluttering wings or the white speckles and lines on its body. Yet, I had seen countless monarch butterflies at that point. It wasn’t until that experience with my son that I felt awe and wonder.

As someone who has traveled extensively to some of the most beautiful places in the world, I can attest to being in the presence of a stirring view and then turning to share it with someone who was not there. I still experienced a sense of awe, but I longed to amplify that with another person I cared about.

I love the phrase, “…wonder is our best means of loving the world more deeply.”

So, let’s love the world more deeply - together.

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Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash