Ordinary Days
There are many days in our lives that are just….ordinary, boring even. But perhaps we should look at those lack-lustre days with renewed appreciation. I remember when Kay and I visited sweltering Banda Aceh, Indonesia, the city that suffered the greatest losses from the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami that followed in 2004. On that day, something quite extraordinary happened to the sea, which bunched itself into a wave that delivered a knockout punch to the town. Over 200,000 perished here in that pummelling, including a coastal fishing village that just disappeared off the map in seconds. Tired fishermen pointed their boats back towards port and home that night, unaware that a monster had crept beneath their bows while they fussed over their nets. To their horror, there was no port; no homes to sleep in, and no wives and children to greet them. All was gone.
One morning I sipped coffee with Wahuel, a delightful smiling man who told me that I looked young from the neck down (almost a compliment), but who had lost both his children to that wicked wave. His wife’s entire family was wiped out. And yesterday I chatted with a giggling Nurlaila, a delightful fifteen year old whose home is still the temporary barracks that were hastily thrown up in the wake of that terrible day. Both her parents perished in that awful sea; and just seconds after telling me that most dreadful news, she burst into singing – in perfect English – the Abba classic, ‘I believe in angels’. I’m sure she does, but for a moment I wondered how. There are so many here whose lives have been smashed to smithereens by that ominously historic day. Mass graves abound, anonymous resting places for thousands; many were never found, swallowed up by the ravenous beast that was the sea.
All of which makes a restoration of relative normality a delight to behold. We’ve visited the Community and Children’s Centre run by Children on the Edge, the charity originally launched by Body Shop founder Anita Roddick. It’s a hive of bustling normality. Kindergarten children giggle on the swings. Computer skills classes are held in one room; embroidery in another. In the large hall, a children’s choir practice their performance for an upcoming concert. All very ordinary, and wonderful with it.
One night, we attended a football match organised by Children on the Edge, the culmination of a two week tournament. It was just like an England world cup match – a mixture of brilliance and ineptitude, a penalty shoot out nail-biter to decide the result, and even a petulant young Rooney wannabe given a red card and sent off for fouling and then getting lippy with the ref. We cheered ourselves hoarse as the grinning captain held the moulded plastic trophy aloft, which was almost as big as he is. The goalkeeper was the hero/saviour, and so was thrown up into the air, and caught, or so we hope.
I wiped a tear away as I watched ordinary kids enjoying another ordinary day, free from fear, for a moment at least, from a monster wave; able to dream about bending it like Beckham, able to laugh and argue and pull faces and have melting ice cream running down their chins; able to do what kids do best, which is just living extravagantly for the moment. These people don’t want a life that looks like a disaster movie, but where the special effects are real; they’d just like to be able to laugh and cry and wake and sleep and love and die like everybody else.
Perhaps you are suffering from the raging disease that afflicts all who know for sure where their next meal is coming from – boredom. The ordinary looks rather dull. Why not pause again, and be grateful for those days of quiet predictability, where nothing much happens, including nothing much that is bad. Somehow, the ordinary can start to look rather magnificent.