Always be ordinary

What if we all just put down our clever and picked up our ordinary?

(Magritte, “The Mystery of the Ordinary”)

“You’re always more unreal to yourself than other people are.”

-Marguerite Duras, Practicalities (1990)

I got an email this week with this subject line: “Never Be Ordinary.”

Dang, that’s a lot of pressure, I thought to myself. I felt immediately exhausted.

We are our most potent selves when we allow ourselves to be ordinary. Why? Because my ordinary is not your ordinary. And while I think my ordinary is just . . . ordinary, and you think the same about yours, actually, many times, our ordinary is what is extraordinary to other people.

In other words, put down your clever and pick up your ordinary. It is what makes you uniquely you.

I have hosted several writing retreats in the past few weeks, and what I know is this: When a writer is trying to be clever, I can tell. And I don’t appreciate that writing nearly as much as writing that is not conscious of its beauty. For the same reasons, the singing I most appreciate on “American’s Got Talent” or “Th…