Celebration Lives in the Everyday Experience

It feels good to go after what we want, right? Just remember it doesn’t always look like running through the ribbon at the end of the race or performing on stage to a sea of cheering fans or even sitting on a boat with your legs up overlooking a vast and brilliant ocean. Sometimes it’s seeing your bank account and thinking “not bad” or greeting someone who loves you with a kiss at the end of your Tuesday or sitting peacefully on your bed on a Saturday morning with a book. Sometimes all it looks like is support and stability of a steady job. Sometimes it looks like the luxury of rest and companionship.

Remember that these are worth celebrating too. We don’t always take a moment to honor what isn’t obvious. Winning an award is pretty easy to see as an accomplishment. Nurturing a relationship through a phone call that’s always available to you, that may be more subtle but no less worth celebrating.

Other times, we go after what we want and it’s not what we expected. This isn’t to say that it’s worse. In fact, sometimes it’s even better than we imagined but it’s still not what we envisioned. And so in any pursuit of what we want, there may be mourning involved even as we celebrate “better than what you could’ve imagined” because, well, it’s not what we imagined. Our fantasies remain fantasies even as our dreams come true and we get to mourn the loss as much as we celebrate the gain. Take the time to acknowledge the subtle celebrations of your daily routine. And give yourself the grace to mourn how it may also be very different from what you imagined. Both can be true and both are worth your attention.