A Life Less Ordinary

The title begs the question: Less ordinary than what?

Does it mean being a Senator or a Congressperson? Does it mean being a celebrity or a best-selling author? Does it mean being a Captain of Industry or a Titan of Finance? Or, might it just mean holding more fast to one’s dreams than most of us do? Might it mean being willing to risk the scorn and/or ridicule of one’s peers, one’s family, one’s friends, to go after what it is you really want?

Last Sunday evening, the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” pretty much swept the Oscars. Best Picture, Best Director, and a bunch of other awards. Danny Boyle was the director. So, I decided to look into Danny Boyle’s previous movies on Netflix to see what I could see. “Trainspotting,” saw it. Liked it, but I’m kind of tired of watching movies about heroin addicts. Then I came across “A Life Less Ordinary.” It sounded intriguing. Starring Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz, with Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo as co-stars. I rented it. It also features strong performances by Ian Holm, Stanley Tucci, Dan Hedaya, and Tony Shalhoub, along with some delightful smaller parts by Judith Ivey and Maury Chaykin.

My wife Gloria and I watched the film earlier this evening, and to say that it was absolutely delightful is an understatement. But, I’m not really interested in reviewing the film here – I’m interested in exploring what “a life less ordinary” might really, actually mean.

Again, I bump against the question: Less ordinary than what?

Perhaps less ordinary than what we are programmed to desire: a good job, a nice house, a family with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. Perhaps it’s less ordinary than summers on the Cape or the Vineyard or the Keys and the sports car that no one ever drives because we wouldn’t want it to be ruined in case of an accident, now, would we? Perhaps it’s less ordinary than the PTA and the Lions Club and the Country Club and the teas after church on a Sunday morning.

But, it interests me. What defines a life less ordinary? Following our bliss? (As Joseph Campbell famously advised us all to do.) Daring to try something new? Something unexpected? Something risky or dangerous or worse?

I think it might be singing one’s own song. Or, as Henry David Thoreau put it, “If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.” Isn’t it funny that in the pop cultural sphere this quote has been transposed or transfigured to become something along the lines of one who “marches to the beat of a different drummer?” Thoreau writes of one who “loses pace with his companions,” not one who is marching.

I think many of us – perhaps most – live a life less ordinary. We might think we are living ordinary lives, but what is ordinary? What does it really mean? For some, ordinary is working eighty hours a week for nine months a year – this group of people might include high school teachers and video editors of network television shows. Are they ordinary? Others might gig on Saturday nights at grungy bars in the northern suburbs and then don a suit and tie for their week of work at an accounting firm in the Loop. Are they ordinary? Are you ordinary if you’ve written a song, a poem, a sonata? And, what if you’ve written these things, but no one has ever heard or read them? Well then, you MUST be ordinary, right? Let’s not forget that “The Confederacy of Dunces” was published posthumously, eleven years after John Kennedy Toole killed himself. Was he ordinary?

Are you? Am I?

Ignatius J. Reilly may have been a slob, but he was also one hell of a compelling character. And both he, and his creator lived a life less ordinary indeed.