Extraordinary in Joy

We live in a world where often joy is sucked away by others, even if we try hard to keep it. Gatekeepers shoo away any of those who want to be part of fandoms of all sorts because they aren’t “enough.” Unhappy people say snide comments meant to deflate the bubbles of elation. Look at any fun and viral video and you’ll find plenty of comments meant to take away the fun. The naysayers really know how to take away any joy if we let them.

But the joy is still there. It is still sweet. It is still bubbly and elated and effervescent, even if someone’s trying to pop all of the bubbles. But joy also understands that it needs a bare-knuckled and nitty-gritty brawl to help find it. It understands it needs to fight to be found in the normal.

And it truly is in the normal.

Joy is in that first sip of warm coffee on a chilly winter morning. It’s the giddiness in the first memory of a snowfall. It’s that unexpected blessing in the midst of woe. It’s in the laughter of children when they spot that elf on a shelf in the local grocery store. It’s in the silly simple gifts and in the everyday mundanity. It’s in the contentment we find with what we have. It’s in the good vibes and goofy stories we share with others.

It’s in the ordinary.

But then again, we are ordinary, even as we are extraordinary. We are mundane and yet we are also spectacular because we find that joy in the normal. Let me explain by using the story of Christmas and that little town of Bethlehem.

It’s a normal story and a normal scene. When one thinks about it, that “O Holy Night” we sing at this season was really just a oh, normal night. That holy we find now was just ordinary and a fairly silent at that, a tiny not-even-a-blip-on-the-Roman-radar instead of something super extraordinary. A simple birth in a manager because the inns were packed full because of a census. A young normal girl betrothed from a small town where nothing special happens. Ordinary shepherds watching their flocks overnight like they normally did. All was calm, all was mundane, all was fairly conventional and routine for that time of year and those circumstances.

Yet it is in these simple things that something so magical happens. It is in this normal night that the extraordinary occurred. And it is in every Christmas season that we look forward from our normal, mundane lives to find this extraordinary in a mundane night that happened long ago.

I write fantasy stories, as many of you may know. I write stories where the improbable meets the impossible and where everyday mundanity meets fantastical magic. But my heroes aren’t all powerful, all-knowing beings that haven’t any weaknesses. They aren’t perfect characters without flaws. They are normal in the sense that they know sorrow and loss, ordinary circumstances and regular mundane life. They are riff-raff and rag-tags, outcasts and commonplace. Yet they find themselves facing the extraordinary, just as the young betrothed girl did, and ponder the things in their hearts. They face the scary, just as the shepherds did, and spread the news. They find the magic in the moments, the quiet of peace, the thrill of hope, the warmth of love and the contentment of that ordinary yet extraordinary joy.

Even though we are ordinary, we are not basic. Even though we are “normal,” we are not simple. Even though we are mundane, we find the magic of joy in that extraordinary within the mundanity.

Be extraordinary in joy. And try not to pop anyone else’s bubble.

Stay magical, friends.

Write your own story.

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