There’s a point in life, and I think almost all of us reach it, where you realize, bluntly and with a cold finality, that you are not going to become the person you once hoped to be; that life is not going to unfold as expected. Most of all, it’s an acceptance of our own ordinariness, a throwing off of our ambitions for living an exceptional life. We are not going to be president, or an astronaut, or even simply a movie star. We are going to be ourselves, insignificant in ways that, strangely, provide comfort; blind to an overwhelming majority of the world, living free of any serious responsibility (though we, of course, don’t ever see or feel this lack of responsibility). All that is expected of us is to wake up, to work, to live, to not take the lives of others, to love as best we can those few people in close proximity to us, and, eventually, to die in a way that provides the least amount of trouble possible for the world at large.

For me, this moment came one evening walking through Philadelphia. It was spring, and I was newly single. This meant that I had spent the last few weeks moping and generally feeling sorry for myself (though my singleness was, of course, my own fault). I’d been drinking a decent amount, usually to the point of vomiting, and was looking for a way to get away from this newfound habit. So I left work early, leaving a few tests ungraded, took off my spring jacket, and walked down Pine Street into a strong, cool breeze that smelled, and felt, distinctly like fall.

The bigger trees had yet to bud, but the smaller, flowered trees were already in full bloom. Pine Street and its long procession of brick and brownstone row homes was lined with the pinks and whites of a new season. Discarded petals littered the sidewalks and curbs in a temporary dusting of confetti.

Beyond the Old Pine Street Church, I stopped outside of the church’s small graveyard. A cherry tree hung over the cast iron fence, drooping its branches and flowers around me. I found myself looking upwards, at the intricate webbing of the pink blossoms and their yellow, pollen encrusted hearts.

It was then that I thought to myself, I’m a substitute English teacher. And someday, hopefully soon, I would be a full time English teacher. I was very likely going to spend my life as an English teacher. I was not ever going to finish that elusive novel. I was not going to buckle down and attend law school. I was not going to find the great love of my life, the woman I was fated to grow old beside. I was not going to do missionary work in Africa. Perhaps some near death experience in my forties might alter this path slightly, might lead to a series of night classes and a dabbling in some other profession (presently unknown), but, for the first time, my ordinariness was seen with a clarity I hadn’t yet allowed myself.

It was strangely liberating and calming. Any pressure I may have felt was alleviated. Any mistakes I may have made seemed atoned for. This, this shear lack of notice and fanfare, this anonymity, was what my life had been building towards. In fact, it is what most of our lives build towards. I can’t tell you for certain what I had dreamt my life would be like as a child- at varying intervals I imagined being a baseball player, a basketball player, a famous archaeologist, and a famous novelist- but it had not been this. And yet, what do any of us really expect life to be like as a child? We don’t factor death, and disappointment, and failure, and humiliation, into the equation. How could we?

So I stood beneath the cherry tree, engulfed by its sublimely sweet fragrance and enmeshed in the divine wonders of its existence at all (and in turn the divine wonders of my own existence, or really any existence), and felt all right about being Luke Sanborn, substitute teacher, failed novelist, spurned and cheated and cheating lover. This sense of ease, I soon learned, came not from my acceptance at being ordinary, but from that crystalline sense of wonder I felt. How did these cherry blossoms get here? I asked. How did I get here? And so what if I’m ordinary if I’m still here? Isn’t that enough? And that, I think, is one of the real beauties of life. At times, just being here is enough.

I walked through the cemetery then, reading some of the faded head stones. I went out to dinner with a friend from college, and then to a bar. I got drunk, but not as drunk as usual; I didn’t vomit. I stumbled home, alone, a little before three. In my basement, in my boxers, I listened to Stevie Wonder and I danced, uncontrollably, flailingly, poorly, and felt utterly exhilarated.