The ordinary might be the key to present, but that's not the whole story

Today’s essay is part of a new series including me, Joshua Doležal, Bowen Dwelle, Michael Mohr, Dee Rambeau, and Lyle McKeany. In the past, we’ve explored our personal philosophies, fatherhood, and work, among others. This week, we look at the idea of ordinary things.

“Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.”
- Blaise Pascal

When the weather warms above freezing, my son and I like to walk the trails by our house. Under the bowing canopy and accompanied by the stream’s symphony, our steps and our words meander with the wind. We talk about mythology, war, multiplication, or the bear cubs playfully romping along the summer trails. Sometimes we stop to skip rocks, other times we get so lost in our conversation we barely notice the trail. Squirrels scamper, birds flutter, twigs bend, and we walk. Every moment on that trail is an opportunity to be present to the world.

These moments sound idyllic, but I find it really hard to appreciate them. I want to. I want to be fully alive in the world, to be present to all it has to offer. The few moments when I have found that presence, it’s felt like everything just works. Like I know God’s splendor. But then I lose it. I forget it. Nevermind trying to teach it, to pass it on.

For all I want to, I just can’t enjoy the ordinary. I love the big, crazy ideas. So does my boy. And that worries me.

I want to think about our experience in terms of a little known group of warriors: The Combat Tracker teams of Vietnam. These small (five men and one labrador retriever) teams were an elite army unit whose job was to find the enemy after they “disappeared into the jungle.” They had been trained by the British and New Zealand SAS. They were so effective at their job that the Viet Cong eventually put large bounties on their heads, sometimes as high as five months salary for a single tracker. These soldiers did the extraordinary by focusing on the ordinary.

Let’s look at the mangled twig on the Rocky Mountain Maple tree that marks the first bend on the trail. To most of us this oddity is the most ordinary thing in the world. A branch bent out of shape means nothing to us. But contrast our twig with a similar twig, found on a similar tree, but in the jungles of Vietnam. Instead of my son and I walking, the man walking by this tree is a member of a Combat Tracker Team. To us, walking by, we barely notice this twig. But to a combat tracker, it stands out like a billboard on the side of the highway. This twig meant someone had recently passed by. When combined with an overturned rock, an errant footprint, even an unusual scent, a combat tracking team could read the ordinary to find the enemy. Between the dog, the visual tracker, and the gunner, this little tidbit of “ordinary” information would likely lead to a firefight, one they relished.

We could probably train ourselves to notice these twigs more. My son and I could become better at appreciating the ordinary. But even with all the training, I don’t think we’ll ever have the presence that those combat trackers did. Why would I say that?

Recent advances in our understanding of perception point us to an interesting corollary. We tend to think of our vision as a representation of real life, but the science shows that’s not exactly true. The prominence of an item in our vision is directly related to our ability to act on it. If we have a mean line drive, a pitch down the center will look bigger to us than a pitch outside, because we can hit the pitch down the center. Our brain sees things we can act on.

The small ordinary moments of nature are barely visible to my son and I because we can’t do anything with them. The combat tracker isn’t only better at recognizing the twig, but the twig actually is bigger in his vision than it is in my son’s and mine. With that twig, a tracker can spot the enemy, can lay down fire, and can call in reinforcements. In short, the ordinary tells in nature allow him to act upon his world in a way that our twig will never allow us to.

That’s not to say we should give up on appreciating the ordinary. The cherry blossoms are just as beautiful and powerful to us as they were to the ancient zen masters. But the context matters as much as the advice itself.

If we’re truly going to appreciate the ordinary, we have to make the ordinary actionable. Combat trackers made it actionable by hunting the enemy in the dense jungle. Indigenous tribes made it actionable by tracking animals. Zen masters made it actionable as a search for enlightenment — and as a way to harden themselves against the brutality of war in ancient Japan. However we choose to make it actionable, we need to first believe we can do something with it.

That something might be spiritual, believing we can find enlightenment if only we submit to the ordinary. It might be physical, believing we can create something new out of this landscape. It could even be intellectual, searching for a new theory or a solution to a sticky problem in our story. But until we believe that our actions can matter, that we can have an impact on the world around us, we’ll never learn to appreciate the ordinary.

As my son and I wait for winter to release her icy grip and allow us to return to our daily walks, I think about what I want for him. These walks are a break, but they’re also part of our continuing home education. If I can hope for anything from these walks, it’s that he’ll come to believe he can accomplish more than society would have him believe. I would like for him to realize he’s capable of acting on his world. And as he does, I imagine he’ll realize that nothing is really ordinary. Everything is infinitely deep, infinitely beautiful, because he too is infinitely deep and beautiful.

It’s a lesson we should all appreciate.

Read The Whole Series

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