Just Guyton

This morning wasn’t particularly exciting.

I did my workout. I made myself a Banana Nut Latte—which, by the way, was so good yesterday that it immediately earned a spot in the regular rotation—and I sat down to write.

That’s it.

No big announcement. No exciting plans. No life-changing moment.

Just an ordinary Friday morning.

And sitting here with my coffee, I started thinking:

Apparently, this is the good stuff.

I think we spend a lot of our lives waiting for the big things.

The vacation. The new house. The promotion. The big accomplishment. The day when everything finally falls into place and we can look around and say, Okay. Now my life is good.

Except I’m starting to think that’s not really how it works.

Maybe a good life isn’t one big, spectacular thing.

Maybe it’s a whole bunch of little things we almost forget to notice.

It’s when the coffee comes out exactly right.

It’s fresh sheets.

It’s your favorite song coming on when you didn’t even know you needed to hear it.

It’s laughing with your husband over something so ridiculous that five minutes later neither of you can remember why you started laughing.

It’s finding the thing you were absolutely positive had disappeared forever.

It’s dinner turning out better than expected.

It’s getting excited about a new board game.

It’s putting on comfortable clothes and realizing you don’t have anywhere else you have to go today—which, at this stage of adulthood, feels suspiciously close to winning the lottery.

And it’s the phone ringing and seeing that it’s one of the grandkids.

They might be calling to tell you something important.

They might be calling to tell you something completely random.

To them, they’re just calling Grandma.

They have no idea they may have just made one of the best parts of your day.

That’s the thing about the good stuff.

It rarely announces itself.

There are no balloons. Nobody hands you a certificate. There isn’t a little voice from the sky saying, Pay attention. You’re going to miss this someday.

It just happens.

And I think there have been times in my life when an ordinary, peaceful Friday morning was exactly what I was wishing for.

I just didn’t call it that at the time.

We spend so much energy chasing extraordinary lives that sometimes we forget to look around at the perfectly ordinary one we’re already living.

Someone you love is in the next room.

The coffee is hot.

Everybody is okay.

You’re laughing.

Nothing needs to be fixed right this second.

For a little while, the world is quiet.

Maybe that’s enough.

Actually, maybe it’s more than enough.

Because some of the best days of our lives probably won’t look particularly important while we’re living them.

They’ll just look like Friday.

Maybe we don’t have to wait for life to become extraordinary before we decide it’s good.

Maybe the extraordinary part is finally learning to notice the ordinary.

Apparently, this is the good stuff.

And I think I’m finally paying attention.