A Life Less Ordinary

If I'm being honest, I will tell you that I don't want an ordinary life.  Living weeks and years of 9 to 5, with evenings of 6 to 9 spent in front of the tv has never, ever appealed to me.  And since we are in the Christmas season, I will also confess that Jimmy Stewart's A Wonderful Life has haunted me since the first time I saw it as a child. 

I guess what I'm trying to work through out loud, here,  is the idea of the extraordinary life.  I will tell you that I think that it's more than superficial.  More than success and travel and money.  Although these things are nice, I think you can have all of those things and still have lived an ordinary, blah and empty life.

In the way that life has of converging moments, or points of view, I began listening to Drops Like Stars today, by Rob Bell.  Examining suffering as a catalyst for growth, creativity and the extraordinary life.  Rob talks about two kinds of death, the obvious extreme suffering that leads to death and the mundane existence that leads to emotional and sometimes spiritual death, perhaps.

There are frivolous things that I want to accomplish in my pursuit of the vibrant life.

Learn to dance the Argentine Tango
Learn to play the piano
Ride horseback more often
Paint a masterpiece, if even a personal one
Be a successful, even well known photographer
Achieve financial security
Learn to make good guacamole

Did I put my career on the frivolous list?  I did.  Because I don't think that I can take my camera to the next life.  Or impress the angels with my accomplishments.  To be excellent in my career is a goal.

But.

When I think of the extra ordinary life, I think of those who make a difference: a material, definable, measurable difference in the lives of those they touch.  That life is not the comfortable life of someone who drifts along from pleasure to pleasure.  That life involves suffering and work and challenge.  And I wonder if I'm in fact brave enough to live a life less ordinary.  I am challenged by those who are already doing it.  Can you love so hard and so much that in the end, whether you are broken and bloodied by what life has handed out you can grin defiantly?  You can raise an open hand and dance in praise with more abandon, because you have nothing left to lose?  And am I willing to have nothing left to lose in pursuit of Jesus, as he calls me/us to the abundant life?

The only thing I know for certain is I do not want the ordinary.  The silent death of boredom.  The emptiness of fearing to love.

Interested in things I've already checked off the frivolous list?

Milking a cow
Studying under a master portraitist
Making a delicious sangria
Learning to drive stick


"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"~ It's a Wonderful Life