In a String of Iridescent Rainbows
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” she shouted, bubbles trailing her ankles in a string of iridescent rainbows. I glanced up from my notebook and watched her run across the field with 6 little boys in tow, wondering if she realized the wisdom of her statement. Probably not, but that’s what makes children so wonderful - unassuming humbleness.
I left the park, but her joyful proclamation didn't leave my mind. Today, it reminds me of my college graduation ceremony - important not because of its semblance, but because of what sitting for four hours gives you space to realize. The day was very hot, and for a girl finishing far behind her peers and friends, seemingly insignificant. I spent the first hour of the ceremony regretting the dismissal of my plan to wear a bikini under the robe. I spent the second writing a letter to the president’s wife about squirrels. The third and fourth were spent filling a blank page in the back of my program with a list of all the good times I could remember, times when my friends were beside me instead of in front of me. I worked very hard in college. There were many big moments in those four years, moments of winning, accomplishing, traveling, and becoming. But those were not the moments I saved to the page. The best memories weren’t big events. They were tiny, in-between instances of joy.
They were the night my friends and I slept on a blanket in the middle of the great lawn.
They were pranks and jokes and anonymous notes.
They were all-day kitchen table conversations.
They were midnight rides on borrowed bikes.
Not one thing on that list was planned, styled, or even anticipated.
Celebration, like anything, is subjective, but for me, it feels like laughter, playfulness, joy. We remember our lives in heart monitor graphs of happiness and sadness, of high and low and up and down. We categorize grand as good and mundane as bad.
When I think about what made those moments memorable, it wasn’t the scale, the size, the importance - it was a feeling of connectedness. I feel connected in laughter, humor, wit. I feel connected in intentional, thoughtful, intellectual conversation. Fundamentally, I feel most connected to people when I am totally present with them.
I believe that contentment comes from that - connection, to where you are, to what you are doing, to what you are creating, to who is around you, to yourself. How do we live a life not described in opposites but in the medley of all that is right now?
It isn’t about the expensive dress that you are (or aren't) wearing underneath the graduation gown. It isn’t even about the ceremony itself. Yes, beauty and organization have a purpose in the facilitation of celebration. But it is less about the celebration itself and more about WHAT is being celebrated. In the simplest words, we are always celebrating life.
Do you know what you're missing?