Make Every Day Epic?

A few weeks ago, I opened up a Stride Box and found a sticker that read, “Make Everyday Epic.” I scoffed. Seriously? Who has time for that?! I was a couple months post-partum with my third child, a little low on sleep, and more than a few pounds over my comfortable weight. I hadn’t been on an adventure that I would consider epic in at least four months, and I didn’t have any plans for one in the foreseeable future.

“Why would they print something like this on a sticker?,” I thought. It seemed, at best, cliché. I set the sticker aside and continued deep-cleaning my pantry.

But for some reason the phrase kept haunting me. I noticed the sticker on water bottles at the gym, on my girlfriend’s athletic bag, on a passing car’s bumper (apparently a lot of people get Stride Box in Homer). I couldn’t get those words out of my head.

That Saturday, I joined my running friends for the first time since having my daughter for a great, 10-mile run with a killer view, then attended multiple sweet and heartfelt Winter Carnival events around our community with my family. The day felt epic. The next morning was nothing special, but sitting around the table playing a game of Jenga with my 4 and 5 year olds, I thought, “Maybe this is epic, too.”

A few days later, my 3-month-old daughter rolled over for the first time, and I found myself grinning ear-to-ear, hoisting her into the air in triumphant celebration. Then I woke up to a broken fridge and a kitchen full of warm food… but within what seemed like minutes, our friends had rallied to get the old one out and a new one in, and my heart felt so full.

Maybe making everyday epic doesn’t mean going on 365 wild adventures a year. Maybe it means noticing the moments that make our lives epic – the sweet, the funny, the adventurous, the wholly un-reproducible… and choosing to focus on them.