If one were to consult the glossy magazines and motivational speakers of our age, one might come away convinced that a “life well lived” requires climbing Everest, composing a symphony, or at the very least publishing a memoir with a dramatic cover photograph. Yet I suspect the truth is both less glamorous and far more attainable.
In my experience, it is the small and ordinary things that prove, upon reflection, to be the most sacred. Making a cup of tea for a weary friend. Sending a letter in one’s own handwriting. Listening, actually listening to a story one has already heard four times. None of these would make for a stirring headline. But they are, I think, the stuff of eternity.
I recall my father fixing a squeaky hinge one afternoon. He did it quietly, without complaint, without even announcing the triumph when the door at last swung silently. Years later, when I encountered the same hinge, still obedient, I realised that love often hides in such maintenance. We imagine love as grand gestures, but perhaps it is simply keeping the door from squeaking for the next person who needs to pass through.
The sacredness of the ordinary lies in its invisibility. No one applauds the person who notices the lonely neighbour and checks in. No statues are erected for the woman who ensures the biscuits are always replenished at church coffee hour. And yet, if such small acts were withdrawn, the fabric of our lives would unravel in a week.
To live well, then, is to embrace the small as significant. My nieces and nephews may not remember my résumé, but I hope they will remember the way I made a pot of soup when they were ill, or the fact that I attended their school concerts without checking my watch. These are not glamorous legacies, but they are legacies all the same.
If there is holiness anywhere, it is not only in cathedrals but in kitchens, buses, and back gardens. The extraordinary is built from the ordinary, just as cathedrals are built from a million unremarkable stones. To reverence the small is to see life for what it truly is: a miracle draped in plain clothes.
