JANUARY 3 ― I don’t normally analyse poems, can’t recall doing so even once in my life.
But a few days after Christmas, my cousin sent me a short poem by William Martin, titled “Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives”:
Do not ask your children
To strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
And the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
I read and re-read this a few times. On one hand, it aligns well with a TEDx talk I gave a few years back where I cautioned parents and educators not to keep pushing students towards whatever idea of excellence society holds.
I said it’s best to be patient with our young learners, themselves already struggling with many other issues (eg, identity, sexuality, peer pressure, etc.) on top of relentless social pressure to succeed academically.
This was how the poem came across to me, simply a reminder slash warning not to exert undue burdens on our children.
But on the fifth or sixth reading ― and here I’d like to invite you to stop and just read the lines again, perhaps a few times ― another truth emerged. I was struck by the realisation that maybe Martin wasn’t so much admonishing us to avoid the extraordinary as to go in search of ANOTHER kind of extraordinary ie. the kind which is hidden within the ordinary.
Martin calls us to teach our children to find the “wonder and marvel” in an ordinary life. This includes the joy of tasting simple fruits, the depth inherent in sorrow, and the powerful pleasure in just the touch of a hand. These are all “ordinary” yet, to the attentive heart and mind, they are immersed and infused with the extraordinary.
Thus, in effect, it seems to me that Martin was distinguishing between two kinds of extraordinary. The first is the superficial, the easily recognisable, the skin-deep form of extraordinary which society often unthinkingly strives for.
Top marks at school (whatever the cost), a “hot bod” (no matter how unattainable and cruel today’s beauty standards are), many “likes” and “retweets” (no matter how pointless) and, of course, loads and loads of cash (over and above other priorities). These are the outcomes to attain what many people may consider (as per Martin’s poem) to be “extraordinary lives” but what he also labels the “way of foolishness.”
Martin doesn’t explain why he considers striving to be extraordinary a foolhardy undertaking. My guess is that often when we make such superficial achievements the #1 priority in our lives, that very act removes our ability to appreciate the small yet truly beautiful things of the world.
If all I’m thinking about today is taking super-cool photos of my sexy physique and posting them on Instagram to satisfy my thousands of followers and generate income from my sponsors, it’s less likely that I’ll be able to fully appreciate spending two hours alone with a friend listening to her share her fears and being truly in touch with a suffering human being.
If my all-encompassing goal in school is to get a hundred As for SPM (and soak in the accolade of parents and peers), I will not likely appreciate learning about the world’s injustices for no other reason than to fathom the depth of global inequality.
Perhaps what Martin labels as “extraordinary” is all those virtue- and status-signalling things we petty individuals crave for without understanding how such craving comes with (largely hidden) costs and blocks us from truly participating in the world.
Long and short, if I’m obsessed with being extraordinary, my openness to the truly extraordinary things in life latent within the ordinary will be diminished. It’s almost like the experiential version of “penny wise, pound foolish.”
So, let’s rediscover the bliss of simple food (perhaps obtained only by putting aside the need to photograph everything we eat?), the delight in plain conversation with good friends and acquaintances (without the need to “win” every argument or capture the best wefie ever), the thrill of learning something new or different (sans, at least for a moment, any desire to monetise our newfound knowledge or brag about it) plus the numerous infinite other kinds of simple “ordinary” events and pleasures out there.
Let’s make the ordinary come alive for ourselves and our children; the extraordinary will take care of itself.
Happy 2023, everyone.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
