And that's just fine with us.
Last night, after enjoying a couple of McChicken sandwiches from (gasp) McDonald's, we hunkered down, flipped on the TV, plopped our tired feet in each others' laps, and eased into the evening by watching one of our favs, Two and a Half Men. Molly crawled up onto the couch for her nightly cuddle session, and Dehlia curled up on her bed and gnawed on her bone.
It was relaxing with a capital R.
During the second episode of Two and a Half Men, at a particularly funny moment in the show, Chris belted out a laugh. It was loud. It was merry. It was hearty. And it was completely, one hundred percent uninhibited.
Now, while his laugh is always music to my ears, this one resonated with me on a deeper level. The sound pulled me out of my sedated state of relaxation and I suddenly found myself - mind, body, and spirit - completely Awake and anchored in the moment. Every nerve in my body vibrated, tingled. My heart thumped loudly, drumming a steady beat-beat-beat in my ears. Instead of having the wind knocked out of me, it was like having it knocked into me. Clean. Refreshing. Invigorating.
All of a sudden I was struck by the simplicity of the evening. It wasn't by any means an exciting night. Didn't seem to be special in any way. And it certainly couldn't, by definition, be considered an extraordinary evening. In fact, anyone on the outside looking in might think of us as boring, plain and horribly, horribly simple.
But, in truth, the night was extraordinary beyond measure. By finding myself thrust so completely into the Present, I was suddenly able to appreciate the boring, plain, and horribly simple. By savoring the normalness of the evening, I found I was alert to a whole lot more: the soft breeze whispering through the open windows, the comfortable chill in the air, the soft glow of the television, the steady rise and fall of Molly's chest as she slept in my lap, the clack-clack-clack of Dehlia's teeth as she chewed her bone. And Chris - laughing, laughing, laughing...
Neither of us have very exciting jobs. We're not famous. We don't own fancy cars or an over-sized beach house that we retire to during the summer. We don't have a huge group of friends that we party with on Friday and Saturday nights. Our schedules aren't jam packed with endless, exotic travel itineraries (as much as I would like them to be). And our free time, what we have of it, isn't filled to the brim with bouncing babies or teetering toddlers.
But we are who we are. A married couple who love each other, fight occasionally, laugh constantly, and live life without regret. We have our moments of simplicity, but we also have our moments of greatness. And by waking up last night - by soaking in the warmth of an otherwise completely ordinary moment - I came to see that greatness.
Life can be simple and extraordinary. It's not what we do with our time, it's how we see it. It's how we view every single second of every single day - whether we're skydiving, snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, or just spending an extraordinary night in front of the television with the ones we love - that makes us who we are. Greatness, it turns out, is all about perception.
Chris and I live. We love. We laugh. And we appreciate - absolutely everything.
Hmmm... On second thought, maybe our life isn't so small after all.
_________________
"Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee."
-- Montaigne
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