The ordinary life is a life spent in seeking the usual common things which most human beings seek such as money, position, food, sexual enjoyment, outer comforts, pleasure etc., pretty much what the animal seeks instinctively but in a greater degree.
The other life is a life spent in seeking higher if not the highest goals that man can strive for and be driven, not so much by desires but by idealism, aspiration for perfection or at least progress, at its peak the discovery of Truth and the ultimate mysteries of existence which are reserved for the seeking man.
The worldly-minded who are attached to pleasure, happiness, joys etc. are dependent upon external objects and outer objectives. This too is not an issue if they don’t make these things as the main or most important things of life, because these things do not last. Desires and ambitions bring a seesaw of pleasure and pain, often ending badly with the sense of losing something most precious in spite of gaining everything they wanted. It is so because there is an incorrigible thirst for perfection in even slightly awakened human beings that no mere outer acquisition can bring.
The spiritually-inclined know it intuitively through their developing SI (Spiritual Intelligence) and hence bypass the dark and dusty road to perfection of life full of potholes and dangers and prefer the straight road instead. Basically, it amounts to being either satisfied with and settling with much lesser and the distorted and fake Ananda or go ahead and seek the original one for all its takes.
