Tag Archives: acceptance

“Is There Anything Worse Than Being Ordinary”

Someone said this to me recently and in a way it made my heart ache.  In my opinion, being ordinary is much underrated.  It is what most of us are and if you are your own brand of  ‘ordinary’ you are ahead of the game.  you don’t have to be famous or fabulous or extraordinary to be special and wonderful.  Trying to be the best, the smartest, the prettiest, most talented, most creative, – the ‘most’ of anything is a recipe for disappointment, self criticism, self-hatred and low self-esteem.  If you are always comparing yourself to others you will always fall short in some way.  To be the best that you can be is quite enough, even though that is a cliché.  Labeling yourself as ‘ordinary’ in a pejorative way is so very sad.  All we have to do is look around to know that fame, fortune, success, and talent does not guarantee happiness. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Observations on my work with Couples continued

Acceptance

We are all different and no one is perfect. You will never get exactly what you want, but hopefully you will get mostly what you need.  How you fold the laundry or whether you can make a perfect omelet should not be a major factor as to whether to be together.  Fairness is very important, but it’s also important to remember that what you each bring to the relationship matters in weighing both the good and the bad.

W. could not screw in a light bulb and was the most mechanically inept man R. had ever met.  He was not the macho guy she had always dreamed about.   He could never find anything in the refrigerator and would always say “where is the ….”  R. would scream “just move something and you will find it”.  This was not an uncommon occurrence but it mattered not one bit because the warmth, love, and caretaking that W. showed R. made up for it in spades.  But she could have thought “if he really cared he wouldn’t burden me so much. He would remember all of what I said/needed/wanted”.  It’s a matter of weighing the plusses & minuses and hoping that the scales balance more often than not in the positives or are mostly even.

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