Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

One of the things I love about what I am involved in is that “Joe and Josephine Ordinary,” are the heroes.
So often it is not the one I look up to, or the ones who are promoted and I want to emulate, that are the world changers.  It is the person on the train next to me.  It is the one buying the groceries, or the one pushing the pram.
My mum prayed.  She was not the sort that would inspire acts of valour naturally.  I was so impressed when she visited and said she had worked out how to pray for people while she visited.  She would hear the train go by, and make a point of praying for everyone on it.  Chances are she prayed for you.  No wonder when she passed a song saying “keep the home fires burning” resounded in my brain.  A guy this morning said how his mum had been praying for him.  He was wild. Though he fought his battles alone, he was never alone.  His life has now turned around.  He champions hope and not violence.
In one system, people getting on in years are confined to the scrap heap.  Often for those who retire, so much that has been achieved, and is good, but their work will be inherited by another and life will move on as it does and should.  People get old and slow and are required no longer.  Fresh blood is sought and found.  It can seem my whole reason for being is disregarded.   What I have done may be seen as important, but who I am no longer is.
I know of one lady who is confined mostly to home.  Her armchair has become the centre of her world.  What she does in that armchair is ring people, check they are ok, and pray for different ones.  To me that matters, and she is a heroine.
It seems despite how old I get, I need to know what I am doing has significance and there is life beyond my work life.  My dad lived 35 years beyond his retirement.  He was always looking forward.  He talked of learning the piano when he was over 90.  Mums dad was a bank manager and died within 6 months of retiring.  He did not look forward.  He was not sickly, and his passing was not expected, it was just he felt there was nothing.
Merril and I walked past a couple of young guys we knew.  One cleared his throat when passing us by covering his mouth and declaring “old people.”  We laughed then and we laugh now, but it speaks volumes.  After watching a series of ads on tv Merril declared “it is a young person’s world.”
That is ok.  Everyone’s time comes.  It is the imagining that everyone’s time goes while still with us, I have a problem with.  It is no wonder they say “when one door closes, another opens,” or that there is a University of the Third Age.  No matter what stage of life I am at, I need to feel my life has some meaning.
So much makes us feel our use by date has been reached. Yet that is only true when our last breath is breathed.  Until that time, I reckon there is stuff to do.  I may not be a noble, or highly influential, or sought out and photographed by the press, but I can stand tall knowing I am an ordinary man doing extraordinary things.