There Is Nothing Ordinary About An Ordinary Day

Editorial by Robert Kirwan

   I think we have all heard the saying, "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away."  This cliché is constantly being used by inspirational speakers and writers to convince us that we should appreciate the truly remarkable moments in our life and cherish them forever.
  
   Last weekend I came across an essay written by an unknown author that made me look at life from a whole different perspective. The writer contended that our lives are not really measured by the number of breaths we take or even by the number of moments that take our breath away, but rather our lives are measured by what happens during ordinary days. After all, we certainly have more plain ordinary days than we have special days or moments that take our breath away.  
  
   While we will always look forward to those beautiful milestones in our life, such as the birth of a child, a graduation, a wedding, a birthday or anniversary celebration, they are few and far between for most of us.

   In fact, we spend the vast majority of our time on this earth living normal, ordinary days which turn quickly into normal, ordinary years. We simply go about our business of being parents, spouses, employees and friends and life goes on.

   Therefore if we are going to accurately measure our life; it is what we do with these ordinary days that will actually define us. Your life is therefore defined by the sum of all of your ordinary days. We are who we are because of those typical days, not the moments that take our breath away or the number of years we have been alive.
  
   A few days after reading that essay my wife and I found ourselves looking after our two grandchildren on a Saturday night. We both enjoy the time we get to spend with our granddaughters during these “sleepovers” and our two little angels can’t wait to go to “Grandma and Grandpa’s”.
  
   It so happened that on this particular evening our eldest granddaughter who is almost three years old didn’t want to go to bed. Try as we might, she just wouldn’t cooperate. So rather than fighting (fellow grandparents will understand this unwillingness to fight with grandchildren), we just told her she could sit quietly on the rocking chair with her head on a pillow and watch television. The hockey game was on so I am sure it was absolutely boring for her, but she didn’t mind because at least she didn’t have to go to bed.
  
   While she was sitting there, I reached my foot over and began gently rocking the chair in the hope that she would fall asleep and we could carry her to bed.

   It was at that moment when I flashed back in time and vividly recalled standing in the hallway at the hospital, looking into the room at my daughter-in-law moments after she had delivered her first-born baby. My daughter-in-law will tell you that she never looked so awful and exhausted, with her hair a complete mess, but when I saw her holding my first granddaughter, the two of them were the most beautiful sight I could ever imagine. I told her that there is nothing in this world more beautiful than a new mother holding her child.

   Now, almost three years later, I looked over at this wonderful little girl, curled up in the rocking chair, eyes slowly closing while Grandpa was gently rocking her with his outstretched toes. I thought about my one year old granddaughter already asleep in her crib in another room. It was then that the significance of the essay hit me. This was just an ordinary day in my life. It was almost 10 p.m. and our granddaughter was giving us a hard time about going to bed. But at that very moment, as I gazed upon her innocent face with her eyes closed I felt the same as I had at the moment of her birth, looking at her in the arms of her mother. As ordinary as the day may have seemed, I couldn’t have imagined myself being happier or more at peace than I was right then and there. I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.