When the Ordinary Stops Making Sense

What is the actual meaning of “ordinary”?

On paper, it means normal, usual, or expected. Something that happens regularly without fanfare. Nothing special, nothing different—everything just stays the same. It is an ordinary day, an ordinary job, an ordinary drive to work or school. There is no major excitement, nothing goes wrong, and everything runs relatively smoothly.

You know that when you go shopping on a Saturday morning, the mall will be packed. You know that when you hit the road for work, you will sit in traffic. You know that when you brew your morning cup of coffee, it will taste exactly like it did yesterday.

We build our lives around these quiet routines because they give us order, even when the logic behind them disappeared years ago. But every now and then, it pays to shake up the ordinary—if only to see what is actually holding the whole structure together.

But what happens when the ordinary suddenly breaks?

Imagine stepping onto the road to find no cars. Walking into the mall to find no people. Taking a sip of your morning coffee only to realize it tastes completely different. Suddenly, nothing makes sense anymore.

It feels a lot like those early days of the pandemic—when everything closed down overnight and we were confined to our homes. Towns turned into ghost towns. No bustling shops, no movie theaters, no sports events. The ordinary we had known for years stopped making any sense at all, forcing us to adapt, reshape our days, and build a completely new kind of normal.

In this week’s issue of The Pineapple, we explore the ordinary things hiding inside everyday mysteries—queues, tangled cables, unspoken rules, and habitual routines. They all seem so ordinary on the surface, yet the moment you look closer, you realize just how strange they really are. All across the world, people in completely different places still share the exact same habits—like keeping a dedicated drawer full of random junk. It is considered totally ordinary… but why on earth do we actually do it?

When you really think about it, life is far less about having all the answers and far more about noticing the strange little details along the way. So before you throw away that extra cable or reorganize your junk drawer today, ask yourself: Is this making sense, or am I just used to it?

Perhaps we are just saving things for a rainy day.

Or perhaps we are still trying to figure it out.

So buckle up, sit back in your favorite spot, and join us as we explore the ordinary things that do not make sense at all.

Welcome to Issue 29.