Reflections on Celebration and Happiness
2:30 PMI have been celebrating a lot lately. I have recently finished my Masters thesis; I am drawing near to the end of my graduate work; My birthday is coming up. We all like to celebrate important milestones. But this has got me thinking about the practice of celebration in general.
People celebrate because they are happy, whether because of a special occasion, holiday, success, or good fortune. But in a busy and fast-paced world, happiness too often passes without being properly celebrated or enjoyed.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote that happy people often fail to take the time to realize when they are happy. And if we don't take the time to realize we are happy, are we really happy at all?
Celebration is the memorialization of happiness. It is the process of slowing down and experiencing happiness as it happens.
Many authors have recognized the importance of the practice of celebration to a life well lived. For example, Barbara Brown Taylor's book, An Alter in the World, which is about the spiritual nature of daily life, concludes with a chapter called Benediction: The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings. She opens the chapter with a quote from the Talmud: "It is forbidden to taste the pleasures of this world without a blessing."
Similarly, the last chapter of Richard Foster's classic Celebration of Discipline is titled The Discipline of Celebration. It is notable that Foster included the Discipline of Celebration as one of the corporate disciplines. That is to say: Celebration is best done in community.
The Spare Key community is great at celebrating things. Whether we're baking cakes for each other's birthdays, listening to music together, or bestowing recognition upon one another using our traveling "award for awesomeness," we celebrate a lot!
We try to make a habit of celebrating one another. For example; we "check in" with each other often, and share details about how our week has went. After somebody in the group shares something important about his or her life, the rest of us hold up our hands as though receiving a blessing, and say, "thanks be to God." We do this as a way of celebrating that person and affirming his or her experience.
In the future, I look forward to not only participating in many communal celebrations, but also to cultivating an attitude of celebration.
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