"The Nobility of an Ordinary Life"

It's a shame I rarely find time to write in this blog, but I'm making time on this Sunday night after 11 pm because I don't want time to keep getting away from me, ending with my head hitting the pillow each night and sighing in disappointment that yet another day has passed that I didn't write.  I have several colliding thoughts in my head tonight after listening to 9/11 rememberances.  An editor from a NY newspaper (not sure which one) was talking about how in the paper, they wrote up tributes to those victims who had not yet been found.  So they weren't obituaries, but sort of celebrations of these people and he put it in the best way ever.  He said these pseudo-obituaries were a tribute to the "nobility of ordinary life."  The phrase shot a bolt of energy up my neck.  There was an article about a woman whose nephews called the "kissy monster" and that detail alone made me swallow back tears.  It seems silly, I know, but the thing that was getting to me was that all of us humans are really the same.  We spend so much time worrying if we'll live a life that will impress people or if we'll contribute to humanity in some way or even if our lives matter in the big scheme of things, but what's most important is our meager day-to-day lives.  The nobility of an ordinary life lies in wondering how the hell you're going to pay your bills, in feeling like your spouse doesn't understand you, in the way your heart hurts with the love you have for your kids.....the ordinary list goes on and on.  But that ordinary, typical living is the heartbeat of what humanity is.  The mundane is what ties us together and it is exactly that that we should celebrate and be grateful for each day.
How fitting that exactly right now my baby just started crying in his crib.  Normally I'd sigh and wish I could sleep at least one night, but tonight I'm going to snuggle him extra close to me and make sure I'm grateful for the lack of sleep, the dirty diapers and the crying.  It's ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.