The World’s Best Waiting Room?

The dentist’s office.

The name itself conjures a very specific feeling, doesn’t it? That sterile smell. The high-pitched, distant whine of a tool. The vague, low-level anxiety of a waiting room.

My wife had a dental appointment today. But this was the waiting room.

That’s the promenade. That’s the beach. That’s the Mediterranean.

We’re so conditioned by social media to see life in two cleanly separated boxes:

• The Grind: The errands, the admin, the chores, the dentist. (The ugly stuff)

• The ‘Gram: The perfect sunset, the beach, the vacation. (The performative stuff)

We’re taught to hide one and perform the other. We post the beach, but we’d never post the waiting room.

But real life isn’t a “before and after.” It’s a “during.”

Real life is sitting on that bench, feet on the pavement, listening to the faint sounds of a clinic while you’re also listening to the waves. It’s the mundane and the magnificent, all colliding at once. It’s the smell of antiseptic and salt air.

This is the antidote to burnout. It’s not about escaping “real life” to get to the “good life.” It’s about finding the good, weird, beautiful moments that are hiding right in the middle of the real stuff.

It’s about realizing that sometimes, you can be at the dentist… and also be at the beach.

The “performative” shot would have been just the beach. The “real” shot is the contrast. It’s a reminder that a well-lived life is often found in the messy in-between.

So, here’s my question for you:

Where have you found a moment of ‘magnificent’ hiding in the ‘mundane’ this week?