we are very good at preparing to live but not very good at living
we know how to sacrifice 10 years for a diploma
and we are willing to work very hard to get a job a car a house and so on
but we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment
the only moment there is for us to be alive
why is it not enough to live a normal life in our society when we say that someone has a normal life
it's almost an insult maybe suggesting that their life is a little bit too bland or too average we
say things like go big or go home live your best life or the infamous we only live once so why not
make it extravagant and i think this narrative can be really helpful in helping us reach our goals
and live our dream lives but i never personally connected with this mindset in fact i feel like
it put a lot of pressure on me to outdo myself every single time just rush to the finish line
and most importantly it blinded me from seeing that my best life is not a stage in my life but
it's a mindset that i have to be in first i feel like i have to define what normal means because
obviously there's not just one standard definition so normal is defined as what is average to be
expected or the standard that society sets for us and this will widely differ from person to person
maybe because of our cultural backgrounds or social economic backgrounds but to me a
normal life has always meant a simple very basic unpretentious life seeking more daily contentment
instead of seeking the thrills and adventures of life and you might be thinking well how can you
live a normal life if you live in paradise and i get this comment a lot and i completely understand
because from the outside living in a beautiful island everything might seem perfect i can see how
having the abundant sunshine and the beautiful landscapes can make living a normal life much
easier here but i will say that living here is definitely not the same as vacationing here
a lot of people have to work really hard just to sustain their life here because it is so expensive
and i am no exception to this most of my days are consumed with working walking my dogs
eating cleaning spending time with my husband and just doing it all over again the next day
it's such a blessing and a privilege to be able to say this but having lived in so many different
places i realized that by moving destinations that doesn't mean that your lifestyle is just magically
going to change if we're constantly in search of a better life to escape the ordinary day-to-day
then it's like tracing a target that's always moving
in the process we might be missing out on the life that's happening right in front of us
even when i travel as meaningful as it is to see these beautiful monuments and historical statues
and museums i feel like the best traveling is when i get to integrate into the culture maybe going
to the grocery store to see what kind of food are in stock maybe going to the farmer's market
to see the different types of local produce and taking in all the different sounds and smells
i love just sitting in a cafe people watching for hours just seeing what people are wearing and what
their pace of life is there is so much beauty to an ordinary life and i feel like it's often
ignored or overlooked because we're so used to it maybe that's why i'm so drawn to vermeer's
painting called the little street when all the grandmaster painters at the time were painting
epic religious scenes and lavish lifestyles of the royals vermeer captured an image of his hometown
highlighting the beauty of a quiet ordinary life
i don't know why but growing up my biggest fear was settling
and being mediocre more and more i'm starting to see the connection between my consumerist habits
the general fear of not wanting to be mediocre
once i started to have a little bit of disposable income i could finally spend money to develop my
own style and be more selective in the things that i bought little did i know that i was buying into
this ideology that tells us to be original to stand out from the crowd but accumulating
these things never made me any more special or unique and it didn't add any value to my life
i might not leave a legacy or be the first or the best at anything and that's okay that has never
been my goal in life anyways but looking back i want to know that i have loved the
people in my life deeply in every interaction that i ate really good food and laughed often
that i was the best dog mom to my little ones and took them on many walks that i
tried my best in every situation and made decisions that made me ultimately happy
living an ordinary normal life might be easy but living it well is a whole other story
i feel blessed to realize this earlier
so that i have the rest of my life to enjoy every minute of it and walk in the right direction it's
kind of comforting to know that this is it i no longer have to be in a rush to get there
to have it to earn it because everything i want in life is right here happening right in front of me
you