Do you have the privilege of the ordinary? Do you breathe clean air, have a car that works, plus you can find your keys and carry a phone? If so, you carry much privilege of the ordinary.
I get to do the ordinary things today. The early morning wake up, the retrieval of the newspapers, the cup of hot tea. Soon I shall begin the laundry, catch up on email, hours of reading and studying in front to me. These are the privileges of the ordinary.
No chemical weapons have been dropped on my neighborhood.
No bombs randomly blow up buildings as I walk by them, or buses as they go by me.
There’s plenty of ordinary food for the ordinary meals. I don’t have to beg or scrounge for a piece of bread, or a glass of clean water or a handful of rice.
I get to attend a fund-raising dinner for an agency that helps the homeless and near-homeless find housing and financial stability. I get to eat an ordinary meal with not-so-ordinary friends while we support a talented and tireless staff who fight the the poverty that flourishes in ordinary cities.
Yes, I get to do ordinary things today.
Most of us will. But too many will not. Too many live with the very air around them filled with treacherous possibilities. Too many cringe under a tyrant’s temper tantrums with too many fingers on the buttons of too many ways to kill or maim too many people.
I’m lucky. I refuse to call myself “blessed” because that implies those who suffer are “cursed.”
Nope. I’m just lucky. I get to be ordinary today, to do the ordinary today.
I wish everyone could have an ordinary day. For that wish to come true, I have need to leave ordinary behind. That’s what it means to live with the awareness that we are all connected to one another.
When I choose to isolate myself in my ordinary, I have to pretend that no one else counts.
That is the ordinary way. It’s also the way to destruction.
But I admit it: I feel helpless today in my ordinary.
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