Celebrating Life

“Singing is like a celebration of oxygen.” ~Bjork

My wife and I just celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary. I took the day off and planned for a memorable celebration, having planned everything out weeks before.

But from the very beginning everything seemed to unravel, nothing going as planned. Wrench after wrench got thrown into the gears. At some point in the day, I sighed and expressed the wish that everything would have worked out as planned so the day could have been special.

My wife then did something wonderful. She put her arms around my neck and said something to this effect: “Ken, don’t worry. We celebrate our marriage every day!”

Well, it got me thinking.

Why do we wait for anniversaries to celebrate marriage?

For that matter, why do we wait for birthdays to celebrate births and funerals to celebrate the life of those who have passed on?

And, while I’m on a roll here, why limit our celebrations to marriages, births and remembering the lives of those no longer with us? Why not celebrate today and every day as an expression of our awe for the wonders and glories of the everydayness of life?

I mean, what a waste of 364 days to wait to celebrate something so special!

Perhaps we should celebrate the privilege of waking up another day, having mind and body, life and liberty and opportunity and people who make life so amazingly interesting.

What if instead of waiting to celebrate annual events, we made every day an event worthy of celebration? What if we woke up each day of our lives truly excited, anticipating the day, deeply grateful to be alive, sincerely happy, rejoicing in the joy of living?

What kind of life would that be?

One, I suspect, worthy of being celebrated.