2009/06/02

Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson . . .


Anne Bancroft sometimes regretted that her role in "The Graduate" was her most remembered because she did not consider it one of her better performances. But she understood the attraction: " I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a certain point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be – and that we're ordinary."
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ordinary
1. usual or normal;
2. not special or different in any way;
3. dull or unexciting.
Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006
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Many of us were taught that the primary virtue was to excel, settling for mediocrity was deserving of contempt and the mundane was unworthy of regard. Often the motive for this lesson, however, was not to increase our capacity to celebrate life and serve our fellows but rather to be an ornament of cleverness on the crown of another.
I have reached the place of which Ms Bancroft speaks, accepting that I am ordinary, but there are still occasions when this acceptance does not sit comfortably in my spirit.
Richard Dawkins says, "There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habitutation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways."
With what wisdom do you celebrate the ordinariness of life?

3 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Did you read or see Revolutionary Road?
April in that book was the worst example of what happens when an average person can't quite real with not being 'special'.......

Driftwood & Turtles said...

Good thing I like an ordinary guy, eh?

DCW said...

Elizabeth, No but I shall.
Drift, Yes and I intend to stay that way.

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