What's special about being 'ordinary'?

Many times, items don’t need extravagance or decorations to be appreciated. I take pleasure in the delicious simplicity of vanilla ice cream.

There’s vanilla, and then there’s VANILLA!! Even though things are ordinary, there are quality differences that make certain things outstanding. Grocery store brand ice milk vanilla is ordinary, Breyer’s Double-Churned Vanilla is outstanding. Even though they fall under the same category, doing the ordinary well, creates an extraordinary result, and that is the product differentiator. It’s true for lots of things, even people.

Vanilla ice cream’s existence is pretty thrilling. The only thing that makes it ordinary is that it’s always been available to you.

And one could make the argument that Vanilla is extraordinary as evidenced by it’s ubiquitous popularity. :)

It’s always nice to have extravagant things. Double malt chocolate chip with sprinkles and whipped cream can be delicious, but what happens when you get too much whipped cream or too many sprinkles or not enough chips in the ice cream, you become disappointed. Vanilla ice cream is consistent and always delicious. When I order my ice cream I don’t have to worry about it. I know its going to be good, because it always is.

The things we consider ordinary are also comforting. That’s why the food you grow up with becomes your comfort food most of the time—you find it normal, ordinary. Special. When everything else is strange—say you’re on your own for the first time or abroad or whatever—still being able to get that ordinary thing is incredibly important. So the special thing about being ordinary is that it is constant. And sometimes I need consistency in my life.

There is poetry in simple things. When there is not so much else going on that you can completely focus on and appreciate the subject matter.
Take your vanilla ice cream analogy for instance. If it was sitting on tip of a banana, slathered in chocolate sauce, crushed nuts and a cherry, no doubt it would taste good. However, you might miss the subtle nuances of the flavor of the vanilla ice cream itself.

Vanilla ice cream is not special at all, but for me chocolate ice cream is special, not because of the flavour or anything like it, it’s special because it brings super nice memories back to me :) so my point is that what makes a simple thing special is the emotional connection we have to certain object/food/place :)

Vanilla is the baseline without which we would not appreciate the joys of chocolate. Without the ordinary there can be no extraordinary. Without silence we would not appreciate music. Without black there could be no white.