I’ve written before about the podcast of Julia Butterfly Hill interviewed by Chris Martenson on Peak Prosperity. Find it on iTunes or here: http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/85294/julia-butterfly-hill-living-meaning

Julia talks about having something worthy to give our lives to and deconstructs the word extraordinary in a great way:

I really do see so much in people, this desire to have something worthy of giving our lives to, because we give our lives to so much that really is not worthy of it. And I think even if people are not completely conscious of that, their spirits, their hearts, their souls feel it. And that is why we turn to self-medicating and numbing ourselves with shopping, over consumption, movies, television, drugs, alcohol, and all these things we do. Because there is something deep within us, even if we do not recognize it and cannot name it, that wants to have something worth giving our lives to. So there’s something powerful about that arc of what takes ordinary and makes it become extraordinary.

I tell people the only thing ”extraordinary” means is ”extra ordinary”. Extraordinary people are ordinary people who come up against something that calls out their greatness. And they choose to say ”yes” to that calling even if they do not know where it is going to lead them or how it is going to end, but they cannot choose to walk away. I call it the choiceless choice—that we could choose to not say anything. We could choose to walk away. But to do that would kill off a piece of ourselves. So even though we could say no, we have to say yes. And there is something about having something deeply meaningful to say yes to, to give our lives to.

There is something quite liberating in the deconstruction of the word extraordinary into extra ordinary. Sometimes I think the fear of not being extraordinary makes people doubt that they have something to give to the world, that their gifts are not good enough. I disagree with that. I think a few extra doses of ordinariness is just what the world needs. What’s your ordinary gift to the world?