Isn't it a funny thought, the importance and the meaning of a single, ordinary life? Is it fair to call a life ordinary? Who can say what counts as extraordinary?
There are obvious cases of the extra-ness. People who have touched thousands or millions of lives. (Michael Scott touched two lives, the moment he was born!) Whether it be Hitler, or Gandhi, or James Dean... but fame or infamy do not necessarily tell the whole story. For every Holocaust victim, the SS officer who watched them burn was a much more tangible threat than the mastermind himself. The world watched Gandhi strike, strike for rights and freedoms they supported, while they themselves ate their dinners that night. We admire the rebel without a cuase, but our own rebellions, whatever they may be, were for our own causes.
There's an old movie with Judy Holliday and Jack Lemon. She becomes famous being the face of billboards around New York City, and he becomes her common sense.
"I'd rather mean something to a few people," he tells her when her 15 minutes of fame go to her head, "than a whole lot of nothing special to everyone." Or, you know, something like that.
Even the rare few who make it into the pantheon of immortal icons we fear or admire or strive to be only lived as great as those directly around them saw them to be. Life isn't a popularity contest. The most ordinary life won't make in into the history books, but it'll still be part of history.
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