Blooming right there in your beautifulness
Are you actually in your direct extraordinary experience?
I was speaking with a student the other day. They said, “You know, you often talk about how extraordinary everything is.”
“Yes.”
“Well, what about how ordinary it is?”
“Well, in my experience, when I am really experiencing the ordinary, it is extraordinary,” I said.
Like many of us, I come from a lineage of people who did not always learn how to bring their actions and intentions together. This is part of my inheritance. In my gut I wanted to be different because, as we all know, it doesn’t feel good to be misaligned. As Shakyamuni Buddha’s teaching about the middle way reminds us, when the lute is neither too tight nor too loose, but rather engaged and vigorous, we are rightly attuned to reality.
When I began to strive to be fully present in my experience of the world I felt myself come alive. Riding the subway became a miracle! Of course, all that happened was that I was present to my normal life, and I was practicing showing up wholeheartedly.
Often, we are not in our experience. We just go along doing things, lost in our minds. We have lists of things we call ‘errands’ as opposed to ‘Wow, I get to go to the grocery store and walk down an aisle with a million different vegetables that all have amazing shapes and colors!”
The antidote to ordinariness, which brings joy and wonder, is showing up with our whole selves to whatever is right in front of us.
Being in our experience is a place of practice.
One of our contemplative medicine fellows recently shared with me how she was practicing slowing down in her life. She told me how a few days ago, when she was doing the laundry, she pulled up a seat, sat down, and thought, ‘Let me just do the laundry.’ She’d never done this before. But sitting in front of the dryer, she found a new way of experiencing this seemingly mundane task as beautiful and amazing.
There was a morning not long ago when I noticed the black-eyed Susans someone had planted along the river. ‘Wow!’ I thought. ‘They are so perky, blooming right there in their beautiful black-eye Susan-ness.’ I looked at what was happening in the sky. I looked at what was happening on the shore of New Jersey, and I saw a woman sitting at the side of the river. She was crying. In that moment, there was beauty and sorrow together.
Working in emergency departments I learn a lot about sorrow and beauty; suffering and delight. Many people come in with a loved one and regret how they had been fighting, or how they missed the chance to say goodbye. When we are attentive to the moment as it is, this is less likely to happen. Why?
Because this moment is unique, impermanent, and fragile. It is never to be repeated. One moment, one chance. Learning how to drop into life, as it is, is enriching and delightful. Learning how to slow down into the here-and-now is the way to cultivate the wonder of actually experiencing our sorrow and even what is bizarre and absurd about the world.
Really mingling with the people of the world means inviting all of the parts of our own selves in. We need to allow the tough parts, the textured parts, the parts that don’t make sense, the parts that are ragged yet blissful, because this is the deep joy of having a complex life, not a “complicated” life.
When I think of that woman crying on the side of the river—this might sound strange to say—and to just take her in, even in her sorrow, offers a kind of beauty. One can wish that she be relieved of her sorrow and yet still love her and delight in her in the very midst of her expression of this natural and inescapable part of being a human, just as she is.
When we are receptive, we find delight in the present moment, which is closely and intimately related to being aware of the impermanence of all things.
Let’s practice together for a lifetime!
Learn to experience the magic of the ordinary.
Find a place to sit, and make yourself comfortable. Take in what is all around you. Let your focus settle on an object near you. Something stationary, like a table, or a cup. Allow yourself to forget everything you know about the object. Then turn your attention to your senses. Bring your full awareness to all five of your senses, and use them to answer the question: What is this object?
When we slow down and truly experience the world, our attention becomes a nourishing soil that reveals the ordinary as extraordinary.
Let’s have a dialogue.
I’m curious.
What prevents you from showing up fully to this present moment, to your life? When was a time that an ordinary occurrence gave you pause and filled you with a sense of wonder?
Please share in the comments below for the benefit of us all.
May you slow down and notice the wonder in the ordinary.
Koshin.
There’s a quiet power in what you’re pointing to—that when we’re actually in our lives, the ordinary stops being ordinary. It becomes real. And that realness isn’t always peaceful or pretty. Sometimes it’s painful, sometimes absurd, but it’s honest. That honesty is the thread that connects beauty and sorrow, joy and discomfort, all in the same breath.
I’ve noticed that what prevents people from showing up fully isn’t a lack of capacity—it’s the habit of protecting themselves from the rawness of being alive. We think presence should feel good. But real presence doesn’t promise ease. It promises contact. And once we’re in contact, even the most basic moment—laundry, subways, grief—has the potential to shift everything.
Thanks for this. It’s a reminder not just to look closer, but to actually arrive in what we’re already living.
My wife presented me with a shishkabob of pineapple and cherries on a fork this morning. A few pieces of fruit never tasted so good. I savored every morsel along with the love with which it was offered.