Permission to be ordinary

I flipped on the radio in the car the other day and caught the tail-end of some afternoon call-in segment. It must have been a life-coach who was taking calls, and just as the piece was ending a text message was read out. It went something like this:

“I’m 49 years old and always pushing to the next thing—the next home improvement, the next level at work, reinventing myself. I’m tired of running. Thank you for the permission to be ordinary.”

I appreciated the tired honesty. Our world is relentless in presenting opportunities to be dissatisfied with ourselves. Or to compare ourselves with others.

But the performance treadmill is exhausting. Comparison culture is toxic. Rory O’Connor, Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Glasgow, writes, “there’s this change in society… all these greater expectations. More opportunities to feel like failures.”

I find it sad that the listener felt he needed permission to step off the treadmill, and sadder still that the pressure had kept him on it so long. Sad for the many who haven’t yet grasped that they can step off it—that there is permission to be ordinary.

The book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible speaks to this

“Better one handful with tranquillity

than two handfuls with toil

and chasing after the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 4:6)

A verse or two earlier he says, “all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Comparison culture is a chasing after the wind—that’s why it’s exhausting.

Better one handful with contentment. One handful and time to enjoy it. One handful and time to be with family.

Here is permission to be ordinary. To step off the treadmill. We are human beings—not human doings.

Yet there is something in us that knows we’re wired for more than ordinariness. Is it just pride or daydreams? I don’t think so. I believe it’s a legitimate desire anchored in something deep within. The same biblical writer tells us that God has placed eternity in our hearts. We were made to long for something bigger, less ordinary. How can it be both—ordinary in terms of success and striving, and yet reach beyond ordinariness?

The answer is found in knowing the God who is beyond ordinary. To be connected to him lifts every aspect of your life onto a different plane. I liked this line from writer Paul Tripp, “We are made to be more connected to what is above us, than to what is below us.”

God gives significance. With God there are no ordinary people, or ordinary lives. With him we find a sense of “Ah, this is what I was made for.”

The listener’s instinct was right in both ways—he was right to long for more, and right to stop looking for it on the treadmill. But someone needed to tell him where to find it.

So as well as permission to stop chasing the wind, let me urge you to seek Him who said, “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.” (Jesus, in John 10:10)