What matters is to live admirably, not be admired

I just read the article: Ordinary People by: Roberto Rivera y Carlo .

It was encouraging to read because it cheered for something I believe in. Enjoying the little things in life. Sometimes I feel as though people fear the freedom to enjoy the small things of life, or choose to busy themselves to such a point where they are incapable of enjoying them without some sort of glamour or media. I've been patronized and laughed at when I get excited about the first sighting of Christmas lights, a squirrel clamoring in his tree, or getting that front row parking space at Starbucks. Why not get excited? What not experience a little joy when there is such a need for it in our world today? I know everyone is different and some like being in the spotlight, that's awesome. The danger comes when that desire (whether it be to be unique, beautiful, famous, or even unnoticed) becomes your identity. Because then you will live your life searching for it and fearing when you are without it. That is a life of slavery, not one of freedom that God promises us (Jeremiah 29:11-13).

Here's a snippet:

This discontent with being ordinary isn't limited to "mainstream" culture: Many Christians have been taught to think and feel the same way. Following the recent release of "Amazing Grace," the move about William Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade, American Christians have been called to imitate Wilberforce. Not "only" by emulating his personal virtues but by studying his tactics and strategies and thus, like him, "do something great for God."

I have a better idea: We should strive to experience what G.K. Chesterton called "the ecstasy of being ordinary." While Chesterton admired extraordinary men like St. Francis of Assisi, he also gave the "social scruples and conventional conditions that are normal and even noble in ordinary men" that hold "decent societies together" their due. In fact, it was because he appreciated "ordinary men" that he could make sense of the extraordinary ones.

Likewise, "Chesterton could be made happy by the sudden yellowness of a dandelion." He took "fierce pleasure in things being themselves," whether it was the "wetness of water," "fieriness of fire" or the "steeliness of steel." As David Fagerberg of Notre Dame wrote, for Chesterton, "on every encounter, at every turn, with every person, there is cause for happiness.... We have been given a world crammed with a million means to beatitude."

In other words, our "ordinariness" contains everything that is necessary to be content. That's part of St. Paul meant when he wrote "I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content." He could see those "millions means of beatitude" and understood that on some days you inadvertently turn the world upside-down and on other days you make tents. Ultimately, what matters is to live admirably, not be admired.