Making Your Life Extraordinary

I bought “7: How Many Days in the Week Can Be Extraordinary?” By Dan Zadra for H as one of her birthday presents. I bought it on Uncommon Goods on a very trying day, hoping that it would inspire her, or at the very least get her thinking. To sum up the book in one sentence: Carpe Diem. Seize the day! The ultimate motivational, inspirational phrase. The book itself offers quotes and things to think about, and upon flipping through it when it arrived in the mail, I found it to be just what it had advertised on its cover and more.

“7” brings up the fact that no day is insignificant, which I had never really thought about before. Until that moment I was confident that I was living my life experiences out to the fullest degree, but do I really?

“This is my one and only life. And it's a great and terrible and short and endless thing, and none of us come out of it alive.” – Holly, PS I Love You (2007)

On a typical day, my life isn’t too exciting. I’m not on a movie set, jetting around the world, going to an amazing concert or anything like that every day of the week. But does that make my normal days insignificant? “7” says no, that every day is a day that could change your life. You just have to let it.

This doesn’t mean totally life altering events, although it could. But more along the lines of appreciating every day you’re given, seeking opportunities and doing what you want to do, whenever you want to do it since “someday is not a day of the week”. Seeing the small things, the things that make you smile or make you curious, those sweet moments that aren’t big events but make you feel warm and comfortable inside. Anything can change your life, so why not take every chance you get to make it extraordinary?

“And in the end I think I've learned the final lesson from my travels in time; and I've even gone one step further than my father did: The truth is I now don't travel back at all, not even for the day, I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.” –Tim, About Time (2013)

-J