The light was just going over the mountains and shades of purple, blue, rose, and orange all melded together into an ordinary sunset. Miraculously ordinary.
I wanted to capture it, even though I know that there will be another one tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after. Beautiful sunsets are a part of ordinary life here in Rania.
I've been thinking a lot about the ordinary things of life. The cooking, cleaning, working, eating, sleeping things that make up the majority of our days wherever we live in the world.
My life in Cambridge was radically different than my life here in many ways. In other ways, it is strikingly similar. Both places were made up of a good amount of ordinary. The ordinary sleeping, waking, cooking, cleaning, praying, writing moments.
To be sure, the tools that make up these moments have changed. A mosque next door is our alarm clock, an oven that is difficult to light is one of the ways I cook, a sun-filled sky in Kurdistan greets me in the morning quiet, and my view is of stark mountains instead of my Cambridge neighbors. Yet still, those ordinary moments are related, because I'm the one within them and because life is made of ordinary moments.
And the question is the same - how do I live well in the miraculous ordinary?
I honor it.
I take those moments and recognize them as miraculous.
I write about them.
Baking bread, whether it be at 5 Newton Street or in my small apartment at the university.
Drinking tea while curled up reading a book in Rockport, or in the busy cha-khana at Rania bazaar.
Watching the sun set, whether it be over the Charles River in Cambridge, looking toward Boston and Watertown, over the mountains in Rania, or over the Atlantic Ocean by Andrew's Point in Rockport.
There is so much beauty in the ordinary of life.
Where do you find beauty in your ordinary, everyday world?
