Bravo the Humdrum – Part 1

“…the business of life is not so much to observe experience (although that is close to the center) as to participate in experience. And presumably one is human to the extent that he participates authentically in those experiences that specially characterize human existence (as opposed to angelic or avian or simian existence). Whatever else a man (king or serf) may be doing, there are various things which mark his experience, and the viewpoint being put here is that it is those universals which lie at the center of significance, and that the variables (whether he gets to move in court circles, climb the Himalayas, write epic poetry, or mix sundaes) are just that—variables. They may color and shape his experience, but they do not determine its essence. The king and the serf must both be born in precisely the same way, and must learn to walk and talk, and must eat periodically, and sleep, and learn that one may do this and may not do that; and grow up, putting away the toys and taking up the scepter or plow; and marry (probably), with all the potential which that holds for exploring the nature of love; and must go on day after day and year after year, doing what is required; and must grow feeble and infirm and then die. And it is the supposition here that these commonplaces—these given rhythms of experience—constitute the imagery under which we may all participate in the way things are. And, corollary to this, that the failure to seize these humdrum commonplaces as vitally significant, or the effort to fly from them and seek fulfillment in various forms of substitution or diversion, represents a misapprehension of what it means to be authentically human.

This view, carried to the nth place, would go like this, then: things are not random; they are, finally, glorious, and the diagram of this glory appears everywhere and on all levels—in astronomy and in zoology and botany and anatomy and oceanography—and is enacted by man in his politics and institutions, and acknowledged and celebrated in his rituals and his art. And it is configured most immediately and obviously for him in the commonplaces of his life. So that, working from the bottom up, he might see those commonplaces as images of that ultimate glory, and find in them clues as to the nature of that glory.”
~Thomas Howard