I feel my life slipping by and my dreams fading away. I'm a 45-year-old insurance adjuster. I have a mortgage, two kids, and a reliable Honda Accord. Nothing about my life is noteworthy. I'm not building anything great or changing the world. I'm just... existing. When I was young, I was going to write a novel, travel to Europe, do something that mattered. Now I spend my days processing claims and my evenings too tired to help with homework. Sometimes I feel OK with my ordinary life. Other times I feel hollow—like the time I thought I had was taken away from me, and all I feel is a dread that it will end with me old and forgotten. Is there heroism in the ordinary? Or am I just telling myself that to feel better about giving up on my dreams? — Average in Albuquerque
Meaning in ordinary life. Leopold Bloom's everyday heroism meets Don Quixote's noble dreaming.
I feel my life slipping by and my dreams fading away. I'm a 45-year-old insurance adjuster. I have a mortgage, two kids, and a reliable Honda Accord. Nothing about my life is noteworthy. I'm not building anything great or changing the world. I'm just... existing. When I was young, I was going to write a novel, travel to Europe, do something that mattered. Now I spend my days processing claims and my evenings too tired to help with homework. Sometimes I feel OK with my ordinary life. Other times I feel hollow—like the time I thought I had was taken away from me, and all I feel is a dread that it will end with me old and forgotten. Is there heroism in the ordinary? Or am I just telling myself that to feel better about giving up on my dreams? — Average in Albuquerque
Leopold Bloom
"The heroic is found in the ordinary—in kindness to strangers, in getting through the day"
43 votes
Don Quixote
"Too much sanity may be madness—see life as it should be, not just as it is"
48 votes
91 votes total
Full Positions
From Ulysses
"The heroic is found in the ordinary—in kindness to strangers, in getting through the day"
I too walked through a single ordinary day with no great deeds. But in that day was a universe—small kindnesses, quiet dignity, love for my wife despite everything. Your homework help, your steady presence, your reliable Accord bringing your family safely home—these are not nothing. They are everything.
From Don Quixote
"Too much sanity may be madness—see life as it should be, not just as it is"
The brave man carves out his fortune! You are 45, not dead. Your children will leave. Your evenings will open. The novels you dreamed of writing—have you truly abandoned them, or merely postponed them? Every man is the son of his own works. What works remain undone?