kitchen window
Kitchen Window

As a card carrying member of the DMC who likes to “Celebrate the Ordinary,” and also a member of one of those 12-step outfits, I thought I’d share with readers something I came across a few days ago: “Don’t overlook the wonder of the ordinary.” It was in a daily email from Hazelden in Minnesota. Here are excerpts:

Don’t overlook the wonder of the ordinary.



The extraordinary, the amazing, the phenomenon are daily glorified in the movies, the news, and on television. Our senses become bombarded. We become addicted to drama. The only things that get our attention are the big, catastrophic, knee-jerking events.


Take a closer look at your life, your everyday world, and the people and activities in it. If it were all taken from you in one moment, what would you miss? What sights, what sounds, what smells?

Would you miss the view from your kitchen window? If you were never to see that scene again, would you nostalgically reminisce about it, wishing you could see it one more time, remembering how beautiful it was, and how much that familiar sight comforted you in your daily life?



Look closely at the ordinary in your life. While you’re being grateful, don’t forget to express pure, sheer gratitude for how beautiful the ordinary really is. We can easily overlook the ordinary, take it for granted. The sun rises and sets, the seasons come and go, and we forget how beautiful and sensational the familiar really is.


Hugh Mility
New York