To be truly alive, just be very ordinary...

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JUST BE VERY ORDINARY

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: To be truly alive, just be very ordinary - but what about being extraordinary!?!

In his fireside interview with Vishen Lakhiani of Mindvalley University, Sri Sri replied that to be truly alive it takes just being “very ordinary”, realizing that you are but “a speck of sand” in this world.  

But, you might ask doesn’t this conflict with “being extraordinary” as is the suggested goal in at least the Mindvalley class?  

No, we can just be fine with just being very ordinary as a man and not have stressful and/or unrealistic expectations of having to be extraordinary.  

The stress of trying to live up to unrealistic expectations causes unhappiness, as you’ll surely derive from Christine Hassler’s lecture at Mindvalley U and her book The Expectation Hangover.  Indeed, unrealistic expectations are a sure contributing cause to The Unhappiness Gap.

One can seek to be extraordinary in how one lives and to create more good for ourselves and others without being attached to the outcome, without HAVING TO BE extraordinary (for the benefit of our ego) in order to be happy.  

We cannot live a “if...then” life happily, where we wait to be happy only when we arrive at our expectation, but we can be happy as we go simply by knowing that we are living and giving our true best, being satisfied that we are living with purity of intention and full compassion for ourselves and others.  

If you know you are but a mere speck of sand and that no matter what you do you will be but a temporary blip in the world, then your ego doesn’t take you over and make you unhappy.

Consider this piece, quoted in a speech by Justice O’Connor:

“There Is No Indispensable Man
by Saxon N. White Kessinger, Copyright 1959

Sometime when you're feeling important;
Sometime when your ego's in bloom
Sometime when you take it for granted
You're the best qualified in the room,

Sometime when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining
Is a measure of how you will be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop and you'll find that in no time
It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There's no indispensable man.

So, next time you are patting yourself on the back for the case you won, how many people viewed your blog yesterday, or whatever gets your ego thumping, remember that bucket.”

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