Ordinary days....

A new day begins, and many of us tend to follow certain patterns of behaviours that we perform every day without giving it much thought. We have a "frame", which can be explained as a complex schema of unquestioned beliefs and values, on which we use when inferring meaning.

The meaning of any situation or any set of  circumstances is then found in the "frame" in which we view it.       What is an ordinary day?                                           

 My suggestion is that an ordinary day is one where basically things/events unfold according to our expectations; they fit in to our "frame".  These ordinary days seem to merge one into the other virtually seamlessly and on reflection, time seems to fly by. There are other kinds of days too; bad days, stressful, wonderful, frightening, exceptional, slow, confusing, complex, and happy, to mention but a few.                    

So, maybe at this point it may be good to describe an ordinary day in an ordinary persons life?   (With this I am inferring a person with a job of some description, living in a society free from war, revolutions, extreme natural, financial or health disasters.)

When turning on the tap, out comes fresh water to drink. When needing light, the light switch is flicked on, and there is no more darkness. When needing to warm up the living quarters, the heater is turned on. When needing to go to the shop, the car is used. When going to work a choice is made between using a car or communal transportation. When struck with an unexpected illness, a trip to the hospital will take care of it and so on. Ordinary?

What about a not so ordinary day, what about a "bad" day?

You wake up late for work because the alarm didn't go off, due to a thunderstorm in the night.

There is no electricity, so you cant make your morning coffee, nor can you have a shower because the water pump for the hot water also relies on electricity. You race to the train station only to find that all trains have been stopped due to a tree falling across the tracks due to the thunderstorm.

Does not ordinary look good now?

Reframing, psychologists call it when we step back from what is happening and consider the frame, or 'lens' through which this reality is being created.  Understanding our unspoken assumptions, may encourage us to use other 'lenses', to challenge our assumptions/expectations and look at our situations in other ways.

Maybe it would be beneficial for us to occasionally consider how extraordinary all the ordinary is.

Instead of taking for granted; clean water to drink, electricity to light up our world, cool or heat our environments, charge our many gadgets and machines, food that can be purchased ready for consumption instead of having to be sown, grown and harvested, and roofs over our heads that can withstand most weathers; we could be grateful.