What is ordinary?

What feels ordinary to one person
may feel impossible,
even extraordinary,
to another.

Ordinary?
Nothing special?
nothing distinctive?
nothing worth noticing?

But is that really true?

Swimming is ordinary for me.
Pull, breathe, kick.
The body knows what to do.
Years of repetition have made it instinctive.
There is no need to think.
Stroke after stroke,
lap after lap,
the mind settles.

In the water,
there is silence.
There is peace.
There is joy.

And yet,
this “ordinary” act
is not ordinary for everyone.

For some, it is fear.
For others, effort.
For others,
something they have never known how to do.

What makes anything ordinary?
Is it repetition?
Familiarity?

Perhaps the ordinary
means what has been lived long enough
to feel natural.
And maybe the ordinary
is where freedom lives –
in movements repeated,
in rhythms trusted,
in spaces where we no longer perform,
but simply are.

So I ask:
What is ordinary?