Ordinary to Extraordinary

 

    I want to tell you a quick story: 

    On May 1st, 1994, after a 4-month battle with Leukemia, my 51-year-old mother died at home in her bed. I was 23 years old at the time. After walking out of her room, I sat down in her old recliner and looked around; I saw her address book, her nail file, her slippers, all of it exactly where they’d always been. A bomb dropped on me at that moment; nothing had changed, but everything had changed. Everything was the same in that room, but nothing would ever be the same again. I knew a massive part of my life was in the next room, and I now had to bury her. But to anyone watching, they would have seen a young woman sitting in a tattered recliner, looking around. An ordinary moment to an outside observer. An extraordinary moment for me. 

    Everyone has at least one extraordinary moment. The observer would see ordinary behavior and think nothing of it: a door closing, a car driving away, a dish in the sink, a young woman looking around a room—benign actions of normal people. But the emotional tectonic plates beneath the surface are shifting violently. Molten hot rage, grief, regret, betrayal, loathing, jealousy, and more…all building pressure, threatening to explode. 

    Those extraordinary moments are when you pivot. Your path shifts ever-so slightly, and decisions are made because of those emotions that pulse beneath the surface. You go around or tunnel through, but both dictate the outcome. Writers are tunnel rats. We dig. We enjoy the dark. It sounds morose, but it’s true. 

    When approaching your own memoir, the extraordinary must be part of your project. The beautiful thing about those moments is that they are easy to locate. Just think back to a time when your world stopped spinning, the clocks stopped ticking, everything went silent, and you had to remind yourself to breathe. Those ripples in the fabric of your life became permanent, and they must be honored exactly as they are…heavy, emotional, and complicated. 

    So, what extraordinary moment put you where you are today? Think. Don’t dismiss the idea because it’s there. Our paths forked several times along the way and we had critical decisions to make. “Do I want to take this promotion or move to the new job?” “Do I want to re-enlist and hope I get selected for promotion, or do I get out and accept this civilian job?” “Do we really want more children?” 

    One question will always lead to others when you give yourself enough room to freely think of all possible outcomes and why you chose your current path. Remember, honoring the moments that made you is critical for others who are taking those first tentative steps down the same path.

Where do you begin?

Think back to when you were a child running and laughing at the park or school playground. Making friends was as easy as pulling up a pant leg, pointing at a scab or fresh scrape, and exclaiming, “LOOK AT THIS!” While most appreciated your injury, some gathered to show their own playground wounds.

As adults, we still compare scars. That’s how we build friendships and strengthen bonds. Sharing both success and failure keeps us relatable and reachable. The more successful we become, the more important relatability and reachability are in terms of how we are seen by those who work with us. Knowing your ‘why’ locks you on course. Why did you move? Why did you study engineering? Why did you resign? All of those things affected the trajectory of your life and inevitably altered the fabric of who you are as an individual.

It all begins with your story. Mitch Albom says it so brilliantly in his book For One More Day:

“But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes, the stories are simple, and sometimes, they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story because hers is where yours begins.”

Think of it like this…as we mature and our lives change, so does our ‘why.’ Those events are life’s rip currents where individuals can get trapped. They get pushed and pulled by opposing forces, unsure which direction is best. No matter the person, age, religion, sexual orientation, and education, most obstacles remain the same. That is where your story lives, snuggled between the cracks and dents of perceived perfection. Your story is a road map for others. Yes, you struggled to find your place as the new CFO of a failing company, or maybe you decided it was time to completely change your lifestyle after a scolding from your doctor. But HOW did you turn it around, and HOW did you motivate yourself to keep going when so many others had walked away?

            What seems ordinary to you is extraordinary to others. Making that distinction and honoring the moments that made you is critical to helping others who are taking their first tentative steps down the same path. So, start writing! Write about the bad decisions, good decisions, great moments, and horrible moments. Write about love and sorrow. But remember, there’s always value in learning about writing because a good story won’t save bad writing, but good writing can salvage a bad story.