On The Gold Coast: The Ordinary Man
Judith Wallis draws our attention to the wonder of ordinary people - to those who go unsung about their daily lives, holding the amazing web of humanity together.
Have you ever turned the fine spray of your hose on a forgotten corner of the garden and watched as the cobwebs emerge from the invisible to the visible? Did you ever wonder at the perfection of the central web? Circle after circle of finely drawn lines glistening with drops of water. And did your eye follow the support lines and your mind marvel at the distance spanned by the gossamer threads?
Most web weaving is done at night, in the dark. When you are asleep dreaming your dreams the spider is spinning out her silken thread, connecting point after intersecting point, each fixed with a single drop of sticky adhesive. It is the adhesive that interests me. Those tiny globules of quite ordinary glue. There must be a thousand or more in a single web.
Admire a web and what do we see? The delicate design, the perfect pattern. And we miss the glue. The ordinary glue that holds it all together.
There are ordinary people all around us. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them Those we do not notice. The sort of people who go unassumingly about their daily lives. This mass of ordinary people holds the web of humanity together.
All over our planet ordinary people hold on, keep going, and we rarely notice them. They are seldom heard. Our eyes and ears are tuned to the new and the different. Ordinary is overlooked.
Next time you walk a busy street or stand in a super market queue, look around for an ordinary person. They blend in with the nature of things and are hard to find.
What will you look for? An unassuming person standing back with head bowed. Or perhaps your ordinary man is agitated. The toe tapping, finger drumming variety. Does he whistle through his teeth and wear his cap back to front? What are you looking for?
I tell you what. If your eyes meet mine, I will send you a smile. From one ordinary person to another.
