By Helen Potts
We are so often striving to achieve, searching for our best lives, hoping to be successful… and yet we can so easily lose ourselves in this ambition as we compare ourselves to others or hold ourselves to an unrealistic standard. Or worse we give up that which we love because we feel our contribution will be seen as too small or insignificant.
Here we go… we walk away from our ordinariness, forgetting that most endeavours start messy, arise out of our failures and flourish from our self acceptance. Whilst it may not look quite as expected maybe our offering has its own small beauty and resonance in the world.
We all have to acknowledge our different potential, resources and opportunities. We are not born into the same bodies, we have different privileges, different experiences.
If we are to live with any equilibrium we need to be aligned to our own inner barometer of accomplishment. Mine is not yours and yours will be an uncomfortable fit for me.
I lived for many years in close proximity to pain and illness and have had to rewrite the rules over and over to find creative ways to achieve my balance and it’s undoubtedly hard. No-one enjoys swimming against this tide. But this is a life many people live, an ordinary life and it’s remarkable in its ordinary way.
Life’s challenges and the advancing years continually alter our bodies, our experiences and our confidence. We have to keep finding and re-finding the truth of our lives.
Most of us are average, ordinarily, wonderfully average. And yes we will shed tears at the smallness and brevity of our lives and the near impossible task of saving any part of this world. But our ordinariness will save our day and it will be one of the most valuable offerings to our friends, family and community. We are not served well by a separation from or rejection of our prosaic reality. In truth this ordinariness is our common humanity and our collective strength.
A small headline held my attention “other people’s outsides cannot be compared to your insides.” Reminding us that the carefully curated image of someone else’s life, someone else’s success is not their complete story and comparing yourself to this will be to the detriment of your self worth.
What matters most as I travel into a new decade?
- That I am kind in my intention
- That I find fulfilling endeavours
- That I connect authentically and at no-one else’s expense
- That I tread softly on this earth
- That I find joy and purpose in the everyday
- I want to say that I am enough, that I am valued and that I value my contribution. I want to continue to be vulnerable, to be open and to be honest. I fail in all of this as much as I succeed but it makes it no less true or desirable.
Mindfulness offers a framework in which to work with our challenges. It has given me an abundance of meaningful connections, a few treasured friends and the understanding and compassion to meet people in their ordinary lives; learning on the way how we all navigate the difficulty and distress of being human.
To be comfortable in our own skin: perhaps this will carry us the furthest and offer the deepest rewards; to integrate this self acceptance, a gentle, personal calibration.
Maybe we can celebrate this invisible, interlinking chain of ordinary humanness as a value beyond the pull or temptation to be noticed. Maybe this will have some resonance for you as it has for me.
Return to yourself in all your failing and fragility, your ordinary remarkableness is all the world needs.
Don’t give up on the smallness of your gift, you were made for this.
About Helen Potts
Helen is a Mindfulness UK IMC graduate. She leads mindfulness and poetry for wellbeing sessions and is passionate about making mindfulness and compassion relatable and inclusive, sharing with others the healing potential this offers. Helen has run a number of community groups, supporting people who are experiencing illness and life challenging circumstances.
“It is wonderful seeing people connect and give space to the fullness of their lives: the pain, the joy and the messiness! We are all the same really, we want to live well, find some ease and fulfilment; whatever our resources I believe this is possible.”
Helen Coordinates MUK Wednesday sitting group