Mundane Rocks!

I’m back in the office after the Christmas break and chatting to staff about their time away. It is clear that for so many of us, a win was a warm house and cold-free kids. I know! It sounds so mundane, but isn’t that the thing? One of the great struggles on the digital universe is how mundane normal stuff seems in contrast to it. 

When asked about the New Year, I quietly concede that we went to bed at 10:30pm after some stilton and prosecco. It’s OK though, because the people I am talking too look relieved and guiltily reveal that they didn’t make it to midnight either! It all got me thinking of how much pressure there is to be living a ‘super exciting’ life.

I love surfing and fishing and so my Instagram is generally awash with surfing and fishing pictures. But gradually the waves have become the size of houses, and the fish have become the size of…well…houses. It seems that everyone is riding giants and catching monsters, there just isn’t any regular stuff around anymore.

Having helped a few people out with their mental health recovery over the Christmas period, I was struck by just how much good advice is mundane advice: Try to get to bed at the same time every night. Try to eat three meals at regular times. Walk. Talk to friends. Take your meds. Avoid alcohol and caffeine… When everyone seems to be ‘living their best life’ mental health recovery can seem like an abject failure.

Having heard a great sermon in church yesterday on, ‘The Power of Perspectives’ I decided to challenge some perspectives on the mundane things of life. The online world is like someone cut the tops off the mountains, sliced the treble out of a great pop song or scooped the custard out of a Trifle. Its all good but no mountain and there is no peak, no base and there is no hit, no icky jelly sponge bit and it’s not Trifle: Mundane rocks!

Mundane is the same old reliable, familiar solid stuff that we take for granted. Without it, there just aren’t any highpoints: Life is either total chaos or its so giddy that the highs are meaningless. Feeling guilty that things are mundane is self-defeating; stability is the ladder to surprise. If you are going to make a resolution for this New Year, how about giving thanks for the regular stuff, the everyday, the routine. It's amazingly good!

I was thing how thankful I was that God is unchanging, reliable and always there for me. In Hebrews 13:8 it says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” I am so relieved that Jesus isn’t constantly changing like the world around me. His solid, dependable presence in my life is more precious to me than anything else: Funny how the best things are the constant things.

This year, how about trying a few of the following-

• Give thanks for 3 ‘mundane’ things in your life every day. 
• Openly celebrate things that aren’t new and that you may be tempted to take for granted
• Make your recovery a priority over the pressure for ‘glow life’
• Tell the people who are always there for you, how precious they are
• Study the constancy of God in the bible and write out a few verses to out on the fridge door