The extraordinary

“Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the

wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive

for them.

The extraordinary will take care of

itself.

-Excerpt from ‘The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents’ by William Martin

The extraordinary will take care of itself: Classic Taoist wisdom from William, in this case applied to the world of parenting and the rearing of little humans.

However, by extension this tenet of wisdom could be applied to the world of anything and perhaps even, the rearing of a dog.

It reminds me of a saying our old football coach used from time to time ahead of big weekend matches (they were always ‘big’ weekend matches when you were 12). He used to say, “Take your points and the goals will come.” In other words and in connection with William’s Taoist rendering, there is forever a fibre of hope within the fabric of the ordinary.

In football, the ordinary point might eventually be followed by an extraordinary goal.

In life, a simple touch of the hand can be a reassurance, an encouragement; an infinite pleasure and a gateway to the extraordinary. Admittedly, it is only in later years that I have discovered that contentment and those gateways can live in the most mundane of moments.

Take, for example, a cup of tea or coffee on a weekend morning. Whilst reading the paper, staring out the window at the world abroad, or even scrolling through the effluvia of social media on your phone – taking a moment on a workless morning to savour your cuppa can be the most wonderful foundation to the day ahead. The ordinary can be transformed into the extraordinary.

And yet, should that moment of ordinary bliss be spoiled by a hairy fool with diarrhoea, then the only extraordinary element will be the depth of your patience upon cleaning the offending stool(s).

As I have often said over the course of these musings, I find myself watching Waffle at times, perhaps more and more during these long nights of winter. In fairness, a lot of the time, he’s watching me back.

From the moment he wakes in the morning, through his quotidian routines of walks, meals and the welcome of person or persons home to the ranch, Waffle is himself a marvel of ordinary life. He knows only too well the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand and he regularly makes the ordinary come alive for himself. Whether this is a simple sniff of hen scat or rolling on the living room floor fighting with his toy bone, he is, at every moment, the very picture of a creature living for that moment and, to all intents and purposes, taking solace and delight from the world around him.

Waffle does not strive for an extraordinary life; it is his very ordinariness, his vitality and his simple aptness to purpose, which makes him an extraordinary creature.

As per the advice, Waffle lets the extraordinary take care of itself.

If I don’t see you, have a happy Christmas. And do you know who’s definitely having the Christmas of his life?

Waffle J Devlin.