You and I are ordinary, we are ordinary people. So what differentiates us from each other? Some say its personality, others say its morals, and while all of that is true, more than that, its effort. Nothing about you is built or present without effort.
Do you find beauty in the ordinary? And when I say ordinary, I don’t mean the sun or the trees or the flowers. I mean the ordinary. The glasses you drink from, the lights you switch on, the clothes you wear. You may say it is not ordinary, but it is. Still, that glass doesn’t look as plain as its counterpart. This one is intricate, the pattern is deliberately melded.
Would you and I see a plain glass, unassuming to most and think to do more with it? At the end of the day it would still serve the same purpose. What is so special about that glass for someone to look at it and see much more than everyone else would?
I think a lot of people have become ignorant to effort; effort and art have become so normalised that it’s become synonymous with being ‘ordinary’. Now, maybe you might disagree with me and say that you saw the most beautiful vase the other day, or this painting that you just couldn’t tear your eyes away from, and yes, you’d be recognizing effort, but I wouldn’t take back what I said about ignorance. Still, I couldn’t blame you much for not recognizing effort. With the mass production of products a lot of them lose the value they would have had initially. It takes away the art from art as it doesn’t become personal or one’s own creation anymore.
When was the last time you looked at a glass and thought about the effort behind it, or when you looked at a window and thought about just how much time and labour that must have taken? I’m not one to talk, I’m a hypocrite and have been ignorant to effort and inconvenience as well. So if this article has done nothing for you, at least let it force you to pay a little more attention to everything that seems unassuming.