Extrodinary

“I’m so far from what I want to be, I really am my own worst enemy.” Downhere.  Ending is Beginning
How often does it happen?  Someone gets a bee in their bonnet at work.  Instead of going about it in a way that does not put the power people offside, they approach something like a bull at a gate.  Good chance they are right, but they went about it the wrong way.  Then the same thing happens elsewhere.  Then it happens again.  Soon they are labelled “difficult to deal with.”  Never mind that they may be a great worker, if they are difficult to deal with people will not want to touch them.  Their prospects plummet.
Or they wage their own little war on change.  Nothing major.  Except the change is the way everything is heading.  Bosses exercise patience but shuffle them to one side.  Their future is stymied.  Others are promoted ahead of them.  The place changes.  People come and go but there is one constant.  The one who resists change.  Things change whether I like it or not.  In my time on this planet there have been changes.  I have needed to embrace them.  I could decide they are not desirable, based just on my preference for the way things are.
I’ve been in places that where I was, was not where I needed to be.  It may have appeared right to others, but I knew it was not.  I felt like a fish out of water.  I was a square peg in a round hole.
For me, nothing beats being in the right place at the right time.  I do not want to be an “if only” person.  A person who, in appearance, looks like they are living the life.  Born, school, uni, marriage, home, kids, good job, retire, die.  Unremembered.  I have had enough “if only” moments to know there is better.
I ask myself though “what is normal?”  Have I accepted normal as being less than normal should be?  I have needed to decide that for myself, and for me the answer is yes.  I am thankful for so much, but there is so much more.
I watched some of Bob Hawkes memorial.  What struck me was that he did not live an ordinary life.  It was extraordinary. Ok I will never be Prime Minister or looked to by multitudes for decisions but am I selling myself short?  I may be an extra, but I can be an extraordinary extra.  What would be better though is that extraordinary because ordinary.
The thing about extras is they are not meant to stand out.  In movie scenes there are often people sitting at tables.  Nothing draws our attention to them.  I may be in a crowd scene.  The purpose is defeated if people at home or in the theatre say “look at that person!”  No, I am to blend in.
I ask myself, “do I want to blend in?”  My answer is yes and no.  It is yes because I do not want to stand out for all the wrong reasons.  It is no because I do not necessarily want to be one of the forgotten dead.  I do not want anyone to just blend in.  I want extraordinary to be the new normal.