remarkable

Week 2 of the ScrapShare Blog Challenge is about the word Remarkable.

Read the following quote and think on it:

"My students were middle-class kids who were ashamed of their background. They felt like unless they grew up in poverty, they had nothing to write about...I felt sorry for these kids, that they thought their whole past was absolutely worthless because it was less than remarkable."
-David Sedaris, from an interview in January Magazine

Admit it. You've said, "I have nothing to blog about. My life is boring." Haven't you. Haven't you?

Your challenge is to write about it anyway.
Write about your less than remarkable life. Write about your routines, your habits, your schedule. Find the unremarkable things about your life and CELEBRATE them.

Go - be remarkable!

Being literal in this week’s Blog Challenge, I thought about the quote first before reading on. Interestingly enough, the quote brought me back to my High School senior days when I was applying to college and had those darn essays to write. Back then, I was one of those kids with a different background. And I didn’t find myself REMARKABLE at all, but DIFFERENT and out of place - and that is what I wrote about in my college application essays.

Fast forward to now - I don’t find myself to be TOO Different anymore and yes, my life and daily routine is a bit on the boring side. Oh, and I read the rest of the challenge and realize that my teenage angst isn’t what this week’s challenge is about (thank goodness!).

So I started to think about the word Remarkable and what the word conjures up – I looked up a definition out of Wiktionary:

Remarkable (adjective): Worthy of being remarked or noticed; noticeable; conspicuous; hence, uncommon; extraordinary.

Side comment - Ack! Even the definition brings me back to my teenaged angst years (OK – I will need to keep on track again).

And as I was thinking about the word, the song "Suddenly I See" by KT Tunstall came up on my iPod, This was the first time I had listened to this song and I was drawn to how hauntingly appropriate it was to this week’s challenge.

Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she's a beautiful girl
She's a beautiful girl
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm

Suddenly I see
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me

I feel like walking the world
Like walking the world
You can hear she's a beautiful girl
She's a beautiful girl
She fills up every corner like she's born in black and white
Makes you feel warmer when you're trying to remember
What you heard
She likes to leave you hanging on a wire

Suddenly I see

And she's taller than most
And she's looking at me
I can see her eyes looking from a page in a magazine
Oh she makes me feel like I could be a tower
A big strong tower
She got the power to be
The power to give
The power to see

Suddenly I see

I think we all want to be Remarkable like the girl described in the song, and the reality is that we are ALL like the girl in the song. I look around me and find all sorts of Remarkable people, things and events. Just the other day, running in the dawn of the day, I observed a beautiful sunrise – wisps of clouds with pink, orange a yellow rays of light. I see Remarkable traits in my children and other people – immense talent, compassion, intelligence, even patience (to me – that is a most remarkable trait).

We are all remarkable – sometimes we just need to SEE it in ourselves.