It doesn’t matter if you’re a barista,
an architect,
a teacher,
or a world record breaker.
It almost doesn’t matter what you are doing with your work.
What matters
is how you do it.
I refuse to believe that a person who works as a janitor is less worthy than a person who works as a CEO.
I refuse to believe that they are more “successful”
or that they deserved it more.
As long as we work for the greater of humanity and find joy in our career,
our work will bring us peace.
It’s so much more simpler than I’ve been taught my whole life.
Our “best” career isn’t hidden,
waiting under a rock for us to find it.
Our career is crafted by doing whatever work you choose with intention
and with slowness
and for the good of others
(and it really doesn’t matter which one you pick in the first place).
You can be a pilot.
You can be a janitor.
You won’t be the “world’s best janitor,”
but you’ll be a freakin’ good one.
One who listens to audiobooks while they mop
and hikes on the weekends
and cooks slow and tasty warm meals after their shift.
One who is connected to reality
and shows up every morning to better the lives of others.
This may be the choice I was running from all along:
choosing to find the beauty and joy in the mundane
instead of chasing the extravagant.
I’d walk a thousand 500-mile hikes
or move to a new foreign country;
that’s not scary to me.
But what is scary
is student loans.
What is scary
is the thought of “settling”
and feeling as if I gave up my dreams
But nothing has ever felt more beautiful or true to me
than making my dreams come true
right here.
Under my feet.
In this grass.
Under my nose.
In this room.
With my people, my old clothes, my education, my hometown, and my body
just as they all are.
Nothing has felt more right
than choosing to find joy in the ordinary.
We often feel urgency
and a desire to chase things
when we feel like we are dying.
We look outside ourselves for happiness.
But we can only see the truth
when we feel like we are finally living.
We’ll feel like we can find joy anywhere.
We’ll feel that life has no urgency.
Joy does not move fast.
Our real self doesn’t tell us that things have to be accomplished right away.
Our real self is compassionate to everything and everyone.
Our real self lets go of anger.
Our real self is able to find a lesson in every painful situation.
And for me, the lesson of finding joy in the ordinary
seems like the hardest one to learn of them all.
But it also seems like a hidden secret
that life has been hiding under a rock
all along
waiting for us
to pick up.
Ali Walks Around 