EVERYDAY LIVES: AN ODE TO THE ORDINARY
BY EUNiCE NGAI
Some of my favorite moments in books and movies are surprisingly ordinary. They’re neither at the most intense and heart-wrenching scene of the story, nor at a character’s blazing moment of revelation. Instead, they depict the everyday: the steadiness of a daily routine, the honest depiction of our needs and dilemmas, the joy of pursuing a new curiosity or sharing a moment with loved ones.
Media about the everyday reaches beyond books, as vlogs, routine videos, and self-help books about the habits of successful people have increasingly become more popular. On YouTube, creators behind such media range from university students (Ruby Granger), popular influencers (Emma Chamberlain), to even doctors (Ali Abdaal). These videos, which feature YouTubers brushing their teeth, making their morning beverage of choice, or unboxing packages from the mail, accompanied by an engaging voiceover narration or interesting cinematography, garner hundreds of thousands to millions of views. What is it that makes these representations of the everyday so appealing?
“The problem comes when social media attempts to break life down into “discrete packets of adventure,” from which we must “cherry-pick” experiences to enjoy… This makes us unable to stay content within life’s continuous flow.”
I find that I’m drawn to such content, because not only is it comforting to know that even Sherlock Holmes needs to eat, but it also helps me make sense of our shared yet unseen experiences. Writing and thinking about the everyday, it turns out, is a skill we all practice. The novelty in these books and videos is that those who have insight about the smaller things in life can creatively document them, and show others that joy can be found in their daily experiences, too. This is particularly relevant in an era of social media, which has given us the mindset of relegating the everyday to the back of our minds as something inferior to life’s more exciting moments. In the YouTube video “Sartre on Why Social Media Makes People Depressed,” a literature student cites philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s approach that life, when examined more closely, is a continuous flow of experience. No matter how much we mentally and linguistically divide it into categories, saying that we had breakfast, or have watched a movie, there is no explicitly defined start or end from any of these moments to another; these moments and their transitions are all part of life’s continuum. [1] The problem comes when social media attempts to break life down into “discrete packets of adventure,” from which we must “cherry-pick” experiences to enjoy. [2] When we overemphasize some moments as good, it devalues other moments, and makes us unable to stay content, as we are always neglecting the seemingly dull present for the better event to come. Thus, the traditional dichotomy between the quotidian and the noteworthy is not only unsustainable for our mental health, but it is also vastly unrealistic and inaccurate.
Social media immortalizes these cherry-picked moments of life into boxes on our profiles, reckoning to ourselves and others that they make our identities. But in order to get a more accurate understanding of who we are, it might be more constructive to think about the unseen ways we spend our time. According to research conducted by psychologist Wendy Wood, “43% of everyday actions are enacted habitually while people are thinking about something else.” [3] Researchers who seek to address pressing societal issues by changing people’s behavior are targeting habit formation. [4] And as writer Annie Dillard poignantly puts it, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” [5] This newfound attention to the influence of the everyday renews our understanding that life—as well as time—is as much cyclical as it is linear. And yet we act as though we exist only on a timeline, telling our lives to others as a sequence of moments neatly divided up into past and future. What if the cyclicality of time means that time travel isn’t as inconceivable as we once thought it was: what if I can change what I do this morning, and know it will have an effect on my morning five years later? Perhaps instead of hinging my life on one world-shaking moment, what if I focus on doing one small action well today, which, for the next few years, will accumulate like puzzle pieces into a grander picture?
“This newfound attention to the influence of the everyday renews our understanding that life – as well as time – is as much cyclical as it is linear.”
The book of Daniel provides glimpses into the habitual existence of a character of profound internal strength. Daniel was among the Jewish youth taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon to be in the king’s service. Having resolved “not to defile himself with the royal food and wine,” Daniel requested for himself and his friends to stay on a diet of vegetables and water (Daniel 1:8 NIV). Even as he miraculously interpreted the king’s dreams, risked (and ended up enduring) being thrown in the fire furnace and lions’ den by consistently refusing to pray to the king, he ultimately committed the greatest act of resistance by continuing to sustain his routine: “Now when Daniel learned that the decree [that anyone who prayed to any god or human being during the next thirty days, except to the king, would be thrown into the lions’ den] had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10 NIV). Perhaps it is no accident that the biblical author saw Daniel’s seemingly mundane habits of diet and prayer just as worthy of mentioning as the miraculous events in his life: the real radicality in his life stemmed from his daily routine.
Acknowledging the power in our everyday experiences and routines can allow us to develop perseverance and strength in faith and identity, as in the example of Daniel, yet it also enables us to conceive of new possibilities. Last semester, I read a thought-provoking article which described how people read architectural blueprints differently than they do other texts: far from viewing it as a static diagram on the page, they engage with it by imagining their ideal homes, spatially placing themselves in the picture, thinking about the furniture they might put and where, and so on. Similarly, when we plan our time and think of the daily routines of people we admire, we temporarily imagine ourselves living a different life, allocating our time as furniture through their unique perspective on the world.
Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before Watson rose in the morning. Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the city. Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night.
Sherlock Holmes’ daily routine, from A Study in Scarlet (1887)
One easy way I have found to start implementing positive changes into my life is through combining two goals I want to achieve into a singular habitual cycle. For example, I decided to combine my goal of wanting to read more with my goal of keeping a consistent sleeping schedule through the habit of reading before bed. I had heard someone recommend this, and sure enough, by the third day, I began looking forward to my reading time, which in turn gave me motivation to go to sleep earlier. It was amazing to witness how far setting up these systems, simply by being aware of our in-built tendency for consistency, could go towards achieving our goals.
Yet understanding the everyday is not only a window for us to consider changes to our own lives: leaning into the daily experiences of others also gives us a better understanding of where people are coming from. The pandemic, by overturning all characteristics of quotidian life, has only increased awareness of the disparity between our daily experiences. As Caroline Godard reflects in her article on quotidian literature, “Residual Time,” her everyday Covid-19 experience as a student who is able to stay home “hardly compares to that of an essential worker, a hospital staff member, a high-risk individual who has just contracted the virus, or that individual’s family.” [6] Sharing this feeling, I now realise that I need to pay attention to the everyday of my neighbors, and concern for their unseen struggles in order to love them more wholly. Recognizing that my mundane experience is not someone else’s allows me to question my assumptions about what should be normal, and, finding what is unjust and needs changing, challenges me to take a step further, and do my part in shaping a new everyday. Godard continues, “To pay attention to the everyday is to observe how these structural inequalities complicate the “commonality of experience”… Thus, to speak ethically about our shared existence, we must either redefine the everyday or recognize its limits.” [7]
“Recognizing that my mundane experience is not someone else’s allows me to question my assumptions about what should be normal, and, finding what is unjust and needs changing, challenges me to take a step further, and do my part in shaping a new everyday. ”
I once sympathized wholeheartedly with Sherlock Holmes’ declaration, “My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.” [8] Now I see his words quite differently; we can’t all be genius detectives, after all! There is complexity and beauty in the commonplace –– and we have the opportunity to shape it.
SOURCES
[1, 2] “Sartre on Why Social Media Makes People Depressed,” YouTube video, posted by R. C. Waldun, 13 November 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Zr8pUHpVc
[3] Palmer, Chris. “Harnessing the power of habits.” APA.org, American Psychological Association. 1 November 2020. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2020/11/career-lab-habits
[4] Gardner, Benjamin, and Amanda L. Rebar. “Habit Formation and Behavior Change,” Psychology. 15 January 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330406744_Habit_Formation_and_Behavior_Change
[5] Popova, Maria. “How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives,” BrainPickings. https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/06/07/annie-dillard-the-writing-life-1/
[6,7] Godard, Caroline. “Residual Time,” Diacritics, 5 August 2020. https://www.diacriticsjournal.com/residual-time/
EUNICE NGAI
is a freshman from Hong Kong studying in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be found reading books, learning (/about) languages, or indecisively writing to-do lists.