beauty and the mundane

 Some of the best writing I have done, in my opinion anyway, has been when I have felt the lowest emotionally. Too often, us writers - if I may take the liberty of calling myself one, although, I am far from one - believe too deeply in the idea of a tortured artist. We assume that because we wrote well when we were depressed, that our work was a byproduct of said depression. It makes us question our worth in a very confusing way because when we are no longer depressed, when we have gone through therapy and life is going well, we start believing that we won't be able to write again. I have nothing to say, you think. Everyone is having the same conversations and what can I possibly contribute? You silence yourself because anything worth talking about has the same three arguments floating around on the internet and you don't want to become part of that echo chamber. You can no longer tap into your own darkness to make it sound more creative, deeper than it is, and so you stop believing in your worth as a writer. 

It's a funny place to be at because contrarily, you love reading about the mundane. The reason Vlog culture is so big is because people actually love the mundane. We don't always need the fantasy to escape. Watching someone buy their daily groceries is just as much of an escapism as entering Hogwarts. This is not a new phenomenon. One only needs to read about how Plath describes chopping vegetables to be convinced of the argument that we love talking about everyday thing. The song Lover by Taylor Swift has a line, we could let our friends crash in the living room...this is our place, we make the call. It's toted as a romantic ballad and used by many as the song for their first dance because its beauty is in its simplicity, in its mundanity. It is not about big romantic gestures, it's about the little ones that remind you that a relationship is about the small mundane actions. 

So much of life is contained in these small acts and those are the things that matter. The everyday logistics of human existence - grocery shopping, filling up gas, taking out trash. They matter because when we see someone else replicating those motions, we are reminded of a weird sense of harmony. Perhaps we have different struggles when it comes to the big stuff - you might be dealing with an aging parent while another might be dealing with a newborn - but these small repetitive mundane moments prove that some things just make sense in life. That you could be a billionaire or someone working 3 jobs to make ends meet, you still need a car that has gas. It's a strangely comforting thought.