On why and how celebration is done.
I’ve been doing some reflective thinking on the importance and difference in celebration lately. I recently graduated from my university studies and due to the pandemic, our graduation ceremony wasn’t what it usually is. I was reluctant to go to the live one, and even more so to the zoom version, so I didn’t.
The class that I graduated with decided to throw an unofficial graduation ceremony and party, and I chose not to participate in that one either. My justification for not participating is that my mom is in the risk group for Covid, and my grandmother recently passed from it. Even so, I could very well have gone.
The thing is, I really didn’t want to. There are multiple reasons, but the main ones are that I don’t really feel like my degree is something worthy of celebration, and the second one is that the way we celebrate things over here doesn’t at all suit me.
And so, I want to write some about those two things. The stance on that I have different standards for celebrating than many others, and the way we pursue celebration.
The standards:
As many others, I recently saw the documentary on the life of Michael Jordan, and have become a fan. The thing for me, and I haven’t heard this reflection from a lot of others, is that I feel like I can relate to some extent with MJ. This is grand, and I really want to emphasise that I don’t think I will do what he accomplished, nor go through the same tests.
But, I can relate to wanting to become the best. To wanting more than many others. To be willing to put in a lot more work in to my passion, and even so, my passion being the process of becoming better.
The standards I hold myself too are high. Not better. Not more glamorous. But high.
Last week was a really lazy week for me, and on Sunday I reflected on how much I’d been working. I realised that I probably get up to at least 30 hours of work. I’ve come to realise that the two things I love the most in this world are to create things, and to learn stuff.
Both those things take work, and I love working on them. There isn’t a lot more to that. But when the standards are that high, I don’t celebrate achievements that I’m not proud of. I’ve become better at micro-celebrating, but the big thing isn’t seen too often.
So I celebrated the toughest semester I’ve ever been through by going out with a number of friends to get drunk. That semester I did 3 full time curriculums at the same time, one of which was writing my bachelors thesis whilst working on the side. It was fucking intense, and I felt the need to acknowledge that.
The rest of my 2,5 years of studying have been more relaxed than I’d care to admit. I’ve self educated a lot, and I’ve had a lot of fun doing things that I otherwise wouldn’t have had the time to do. But in the end, I don’t feel proud of my degree. At times, I even feel it would be derogatory towards people who actually put in some effort, more than one single semester.
At the core of all of this is: Celebrate the things you are proud of accomplishing. Really make sure to do so, it’s an important part of life to get that kind of closure to a chapter.
The way we celebrate:
At the graduation day from gymnasium, there are a couple of norms, and I followed very few of them, pointing a light to the way I think we misjudge celebration.
First of all, there’s usually a lot of alcohol involved at the day and the days around graduation. At the time I didn’t drink, which resulted in a lack of participation on my part. At the actual day, you start off with a champagne breakfast for the class. I drove two of my friends there, and I brought some kind of juice I think.
Before the ceremony of the graduation, we were supposed to say good bye to one another, which I thought was awkward since I didn’t spend that much time with most of them. After the ceremony, most classes go on the platforms of trucks to party for an hour. Instead, I drove home.
My mom had fixed an amazing party in our backyard with a reggae band playing and some of my close friends and family attending. It was cozy, and a lot more of my jam.
The core of this is: Celebrate in the way you feel comfortable to celebrate in. As with everything else, there are a bunch of norms around, and they might suit you, but they might just as well be a total misfit. Take the ones you want to keep, throw the rest away.
Disclaimer:
The backside to all of this, which is really the reason to why I’m writing this text, is that you’ll become an outlier. You will miss out on social contexts, and you will miss out on things that are important to a lot of people.
The past couple of posts from some classmates have been off one another, celebrating their friendships. I’m not in a single one, and that hurts at times. Not only the posts themselves, but the feeling of being left out. That’s the very real backside to the approach I’ve taken. It’s important to remember the backsides as well, because some sacrifices are worth making to stay true to your values, and some aren’t.
And even more important to remember is why you’ve decided to stay true to your own values from the very beginning. While my classmates celebrated, I spent the day and evening first of all working on a project I love, then role playing with friends that I hold very dear. To me, it’s easy to say it was worth it.