Significance of the Mundane

We dream, set goals, and are often asked, "Where do you see your self in five years?" We often do these things with optimism for the future, that our future will be some kind of improvement upon our current lives. In Jamaica Kincaid's novel Lucy, Lucy envisions a future physically away from herl life, yet once she arrives at this new place inner conflicts surface. Lucy, although she attained her goal of moving away from her family and home in order to create a new identity for herself, states, "In the past, the thought of being in my present situation had been a comfort, but now I did not even have this to look forward to..." This is a statement that I know I can relate to. I often spend time thinking about how things in the future will be so great, or set expectations for myself that are so high, and in retrospect they are quite unrealistic. To me, this passage was reminding me, not that we shouldn't dream and continue to be optimistic about the future, but that sometimes we should step back and appreciate the little things that seem insignificant. Lucy "longed to sleep in the bed she had outgrown" and imagined eating her Grandmother's home-cooking. These things, though at the time may seem mundane and insignificant, yet they are exactly the things that we miss and long for after we have moved on. We should always dream and look for ways to improve our lives, but we must never think our lives inferior to something else. Lucy is now realizing just how special those things were, yet she cannot have them back.