The Extraordinary is the Ordinary

I’m turning 16 in 16 days and suddenly, just like Sydney’s poorly designed light rail eventually will, it hit me.

I’m going to drive.

I’m going to operate a one-tonne vehicle in which one wrong turn, one innocent mistake between the accelerator or brake, I could take lives. Literal lives, my own included.

Yet billions of people drive around every day like it’s no biggie. It’s just an ordinary aspect of being an independant adult.

It boggles me how so many experiences are labelled ‘ordinary’ whilst I can barely imagine experiencing them.

To drive. To kiss. To fall in love. To own property. To be a parent.

I’m going to break down each of these standard monumental moments in the lens

of an inexperienced 15-year-old.

We’ve touched base on the horrors of driving already.

To kiss? Swallow someone else’s saliva? I’m gagging as I write this. Tongue wrestling someone else seems a little odd, and it puzzles me how the inventor thought of such a confusing act. There must be better expressions of interest, right?

To fall in love? I can’t imagine even imagine it. To feel so deeply and passionately about another to the point you’d be willing to spill the depths of your soul and plan a potential future together seems, to be blunt, false. Exhilarating and beautiful perhaps, but false.

To own property. I mean, to have one’s name written down on a plot of land and then to fulfil the heart’s content bewilders me! (Within council regulations of course.) I could build a haunted house, plant a load of trees and become a jungle queen or a permanent jumping castle! The possibilities are truly endless.

To become a parent. To have literal lives depending on you for survival as well as learning how to be an exceptional person is both terrifying and… nope, just terrifying lol. It would be such an honour to protect and nurture a child, to show him/her the endless possibilities that await them and cheerlead them as they pave their path. A true honour and privilege.

I think it’s an utter disgrace that we dare label these experiences as ‘ordinary.’ I think calling anything monotonous is a heinous crime of sorts. A solid bar of soap turning into bubbles? Magic. All animals being able to turn an external item into their own cells and blood? Magic.

When you break down the word itself, ‘extraordinary’ really is just ‘extra ordinary,’ because the things we shrug off as normal, what we take for granted and always over look,

Are the most magical of them all.