EDITORIAL FEATURE
Recognizing
the Value of Celebration
By Kim Sawyer
Another important
aspect of our
psychology as
human beings is that
we also can’t help
having a survival
system. Thank goodness that we have it
and that it operates
so well when we
truly need it. There is,
however, an inherent
and unavoidable side
effect that can be very
problematic to our
sense of life.
W
hat is a celebration really? Is it a party? Is it
the loud exclamation of “Yay!”? These are
examples of celebration but what does the
concept really mean? Most of us have only
a very vague emotional idea of the real meaning yet
the ritual of celebration may be one of the most important ingredients for our success as human beings in every aspect of our lives.
It’s all about value. What are values? Why have
values? What is their purpose? Very basically, value is anything that each of us has decided contributes to our living a good life. It is the fundamental
motivator; it’s what drives us to move and act toward things. A value is anything that a person acts
to gain or keep. If I’m not acting to gain or keep
it, it is not really a value to me, regardless of what
I may proclaim. We have all heard the dictum, “If
you want to know what someone truly values, look
at their checkbook and their calendar.”
A celebration is a ritual – a ritual about value. A
celebration is any thought process, activity, or conversation whose purpose is to acknowledge, grasp,
appreciate, and experience the impact and meaning of something or someone valuable in our lives.
Think about it; every form of celebration you can
remember or think of has this as its essential common characteristic. All the other details are just
different variations and applications.
So, why have a celebration? Why have we evolved
this ritual in a myriad of ways in every society and
every culture? Here’s my theory: It’s about our basic underlying, overall mindset toward life. I refer
to it as our ‘sense of life’. I am convinced that our
ability to enjoy life and function well requires us to
maintain a fundamentally benevolent sense of life.
As humans, we all have a sense of life. We can’t
help it; we are wired that way, and all of us have a
primary set point somewhere on the plus/negative
The purpose of value is to guide us toward success spectrum. It has evolved, mostly subconsciously
in life as we each define it. It is one thing to value over the years, by our experiences, decisions, choicsomething; we can value a multitude of things. But es, and actions. It can be changed but very slowly
how am I to decide which are the most important? with a lot of hard work. In addition, all of us can have
I look at every moment of life as an investment de- our moment