Meaning In The Mundane: Why An Ordinary Life Is Good (Enough)

Articles on mindfulness, happiness and the like rarely appeal to me. Often, they have a sheen of superiority that presumes its readers need to be taken by the hand; that without those golden words of the author, readers won't get anywhere. Harvard psychologist Susan David has even coined a phrase for it: the tyranny of positivity.

This article I am recommending is that rare exception. At the very outset it says what all of us need to hear nowadays – mundane is okay. 

The pressure to be extraordinary, achieve impossible things and become an instant celebrity is high and can be debilitating. The author, who has interviewed hundreds of people for her book about what makes their lives significant, says the idea that a meaningful life must necessarily be extraordinary is an elitist, misguided proposition conflated by the Internet – think social media stars, Instagram celebs and the Facebook culture of (forced?) celebration. Often, it is the ordinary life lived with enough dignity that gives meaning.

She extensively quotes George Eliot’s Middlemarch that speaks about those who live a “hidden life... and rest in unvisited tombs.” The author expands onn this thought to talk about how each among us has a circle of people whose lives we do touch and sometimes improve and it is possible to find meaning in doing so.

What is significant is that a growing body of psychological research is confirming what Eliot concluded her novel with. The author quotes one example of a study that found adolescents who did housework to feel a stronger sense of purpose. In other words, you don't need that overarching "one true purpose/vocation/ achievement" to lead a ‘happy’ life. This, of course, is directly opposite to the obsession with happiness of our world. As Susan David states, if we actually build our lives around something we value, happiness will then be a “beautiful by-product”.