how to trust yourself to welcome the mundane?
In our day to day lives, we encounter what it is to be human. Clearly, we are not a cow or a butterfly, right? We get to live our lives on this earth as human beings. And with that comes a lot of things that are very human.
Your emotions, your habits, and your hobbies. The way you carry yourself and your interactions with other human beings can be special to us, but to others, they might just as well be human.
We have an idea of how special we are and how we want to stand out. We feel very relevant. There is so much freedom in anonymity. That can make us feel almost elated and open to the world.
The thing is, we forget about a big part of us that doesn’t grow. That part of us that doesn’t do “cool” things, or maybe that part of us has just a normal boring day.
Social media has a big impact on this. You probably might think, “Omg here to blame social media again…?” I am not blaming social media. I am just saying that it is easier to see everybody’s exalted moments. We see the aesthetic moments when they are having a wonderful day. Then they decide to be “honest and truthful” about how life is not all sunshine and rainbows and post their darkest, saddest moments. All of this is okay, because it is part of our human expression.
What we forget is about all of those other moments in which we are just on our phones, or just staring at the floor as we walk. The moments in which we are not being observed by ourselves. (Because stick a camera to these moments and they instantly become worthy of being acknowledged).
These boring, or irrelevant moments are just mundane. I know that mundane is technically defined as dull, but the definition number two that pops up when you google “mundane meaning” is “of this Earth.” We are of this Earth, we are human and all of of our moments are still human.
Existing as a human
What I want for us is that we trust ourselves enough to exist in this human space without wanting to escape it. Or to acknowledge it as it exists for a fact without constantly seeking highs and lows.
This is very hard as great moments feel like the best times of our lives. I seriously sometimes hear Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi (the remix though) in the background of my mind, as something cool is happening to me. I feel like full on Sharpey Evans in her own movie. Then the bad moments come and cue the dramatic music and the crying in the shower fully clothed.
Both moments are “special” to us. They are of importance, but not being in “special” moments all the time doesn’t mean that our other moments are irrelevant. I think those moments are the most human, the most mundane.
And when we allow ourselves to be in those moments, we can trust ourselves to exist and to be without needing “specialty,” and without going crazy for not living our most exalted moments.
If you can be in the “boring,” in the mundane, in the dull, then you can trust yourself to exist in peace, to be yourself without conditions and to open your heart to the fact that you just are.
The how to?
Is it really a how to or is it more of an exploration of who we are and how we can move through our feelings of mundaneness?
The trust that I talk about comes with being comfortable with yourself, with opening up your heart to existing within the normal and the lack of excitement.
To sit in those moments without wishing to be elsewhere, without wishing to be in a more exciting place.
Those moments, the quiet moments, are important. They are as relevant as the other moments because they are of reflection and introspection.
Accepting them and welcoming them into who we are allows us to stay true to our humanness.
To stay in these moments also allows us to listen to our inner compass and place our focus outwards instead of always seeing a reflection of ourselves.
As you see a child laugh, a couple laugh at something or a dog waggling its tail. As you see someone reading, a random piece of art on the street or the earrings someone is wearing, we are noticing our surroundings. We are looking at all of those things that are very human, those things that are just little details of our day-to-day lives that we get to explore.
It is almost like it’s an art, the art of being human, the art of observing the humanness in others. We look at other people, at their mistakes, their growth and their experiences as truly human, and then we can see ourselves as truly human.
Then we allow ourselves to get out there and open up to the things that life offers us. We trust we will be okay being human, that seeing our mistakes that existing within this world and that stepping outside of ourselves once in a while won’t kill us.
The lesson
It is a constant reminder that we need to have at the back of our minds. The more we practice it the more grounded we can feel in our reality. This makes us feel more grounded in ourselves.
There are so many other factors that impact the trust that we have in ourselves, but the ability to live, accept, welcome and understand all of our humanity, including our dullness and learn to be comfortable with it, opens so many parts of us.
Take a stroll down your space (city, town, neighborhood).
Do it without purpose and open up to witnessing the humanness of it all, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Allow those parts of you to get filled with the mundaneness. Then it becomes time to witness your own mundaneness and welcome all of those human parts that seem scary to notice.
Our need to be special hides those moments that are facts, those in which we just are.
Connect to the part of the mundane that is connecting to Earth. Your environment and your surroundings are as much part of you as you are of them, reflections of each other.
Trusting yourself comes as a lack of judgement and a full of acceptance of who we are, no matter if we want to change or improve in our lives.
Prompts
As I said, there is no how to in finding the trust within yourself to enjoy the mundane. But here are a few prompts that can help you create more awareness around that area.
- What part of the mundane scares you the most? Why are you scared of moments of dullness?
- Where in your body can you find trust in yourself to explore the facts of who you are?
- Do you trust yourself to take you to the hardest moments of life? Why don’t you trust yourself to take you through the most human ones?
- How can you allow yourself to exist on this Earth without constantly feeling conscious of your existence?
- When you ground yourself in your being, what things do you observe about the world around you that are completely normal but pop into your attention?
To stay in the present moment and further appreciate our lives, we need to first accept ourselves for who we are to be able to trust ourselves to exist in this world and appreciate the mundaneness that surrounds us.
