Living a life in the mundane

I read today on CNN.com that the 21-year marriage of Spiderman and MJ has finally come to an end. Now, I am not an avid Spiderman and I've never even picked up a single comic book, but this struck me as really sad and I think it serves as some real insight into our modern-day culture.



Essentially, the two are breaking up to "add some excitement" to the story. I mean, what can possibly be exciting about the ins and outs of a 21-year marriage? Great television drama is not made up of happily married, functional and healthy marriages. Which is why we love Grey's Anatomy. What makes for better drama than a bunch of hot, wildly successful and single surgeons who switch romantic partners like they're playing a game of Hot Potato? Monogamy really is no fun. Where else but prime-time televison are we actually hoping Dr. McDreamy will leave his beautiful wife to be with the young, exciting intern? I'm sad to say I'm even part of the viewing audience.



But this isn't about Grey's Anatomy. This is about the propensity of human beings to jump from one new thing to the next hoping to find the thing that will ultimately satisfy them at their core. And about how in our culture, the "everyday" is just boring. When in reality, the majority of our life is made up by the "everyday". We get up, go to work, drink our coffee, eat lunch at the same places, go home, workout, eat dinner, etc etc. Not really all that exciting by some standards and so we look to Dr. McDreamy, or Spiderman or some other fictional character to make our mundane lives seem more exciting.



The reality (and perhaps saddest part) is that the true extent of living life in that way is never explored on t.v. Can you imagine actually living the life of any of those people? When the show is over, perhaps Meredith has shed a tear and we've empathized for a moment over the break-up (for the 17th time) of her and Dr. McDreamy, but by the next week we're back to her happy self-involved little life where she'll just find someone new to keep her content. And who really wants to see her devastated and not getting out of bed for weeks? Or even worse, going back to a semi-normal life with no love interest? Horrors!

I think this breeds a lot of discontent with people who have an expectation that life will constantly be dynamic and exciting. Real life is actually rather boring an unexciting for the most part. We go on great vacations but eventually we do have to come back. We plans for months to have a beautiful wedding ceremony but marriage is really about the 50-years after the Big Day. Life can't be reduced to a 60-minute television show that only shows the highlights.

This is all really just to say that I want to be better at being content with life in the everyday. With persevering and being faithful in the areas of my life that I've committed. I think true contentment lies in just that. Not jumping from one life change to the next, but really finding peace in the mundane.