The Power of Celebration
Cheer to the new Enzyme for Thought 🤓🎉😇🎉
Hello everyone,
I hope you are well wherever you are. Quick announcement this week: I'm officially moving from Mailchimp to Substack, and I hope the change will help you with a better reading experience.
I want to thank all of you who have been reading, responding and supporting me in this life-long endeavor of being a flow of words. Thank you.
It feels like a leveling up in my commitment to write and share this. As the new tagline says, let's savor, digest and compost life together! (You can read more about it here on the About page)
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Now that you have joined me in celebrating the Enzyme, let’s go on to this week’s enzyme about Celebration.
The Power of Celebration
This week, I got to celebrate with a few friends in some of their major transitions - finishing a year of much growth and learning, wrapping up a relationship and venturing into a new area of their life.
It's such a pleasure to witness and celebrate them for all the efforts and growth. That joyous sense of connection, of being happy for someone else, is so juicy.
I remember asking one of them, someone whose incredible work ethics, beautiful heart and depth I admire so much, "What would you like to be celebrate for?" She was struck by the question and paused for a long moment. No one ever asked her that before.
That was when it struck me how revolutionary, powerful and yet deceptively simple this practice of celebration could be. It took her a while to say in hesitation "I guess I'd like to celebrate how I have showed up and worked through all the difficult stuff".
We cheered for her. If that's not worth celebrating, then what?
When I first learned this from my mentor and colleague Mai, who is the walking embodiment of acknowledging and celebrating people, I resisted so hard.
It seems like a cheap trick, or it is too simple for my taste for fancy complex techniques. I resisted so hard, which just goes to show how deeply ingrained the "no pain, no gain", "suck it up and get it done" mentality is in me.
It’s as if I don’t allow myself to have it the easy way. The hard thing turns out to be to let go of the belief “it almost always has to be hard.”
I’m not saying things should be easy. Netflix & chill is not my thing, but neither is pounding against the keyboard for some self-imposed deadline.
Here is the ironic bit: I still justify myself sometimes for doing things that I don't really want to do but believe I should do. Like saying Yes to some invitations because some important people are there. Then I don't do things that I really wanted to but feel ashamed of or think that it is not worth the time. Like celebrating people or even myself.
The resistance slowly melted away when the serious skeptic in me was confronted with the immediate impact of celebration. It worked wonder. People's moods always lifted up with any acknowledgment and celebration. When the mood is good, everything just flows much better. As such, if I care about the practical results, I've got to take this practice of celebration seriously.
More importantly though, if we care about our growth together, we need people to celebrate with. Especially for the completion of an emotional arc, a human witness makes a difference. My favorite author and social thinker Charles Eisenstein spoke about it in this interview:
“Just being happy and celebrating in your kitchen with a bottle of champagne all by yourself, that’s not a celebration. We have a need to be witnessed in our joy as well as in our grief. It’s supposed to be in public. Otherwise, it’s never fully real. Because we are not separate individuals. The joy and grief not only have a psychological but also a social purpose. If the latter is not met, the person will be stunted.
So what now? A few tips for bringing in the spirit of celebration more into life.
It's the spirit that counts: When you don't know what to do, remember: at its essence, celebration is about the ongoing recognition that this whole show called life is such a miracle.
Alan Watts talks about in this aptly titled talk "The Real Purpose of Doing Anything": "There are ways more seeds than ever needed for trees. Ways more sperms than ever needed for humans. Ways more stars than we ever want. You see, nature is a vast celebration."
Are we humans forgetting that we are part of that vast celebration too?
Pay attention to the joy in your heart: Whatever ceremonial rituals you do then will radiate from that celebration inside you, whether it is a supportive look, a smile, a few words of acknowledgment, some fun pom-pom throwing around or even popping champagne. Trust your own light: you will know how to celebrate. As that joy grows, your celebratory skill too will grow.
As for practical suggestions, here are two important ones.
CELEBRATE THE AWKWARDNESS: Did you ever see new parents cheering for their baby's first step, even though to be honest it looks extremely awkward and silly? That's exactly the point. Notice the awkwardness and say "I celebrate the awkwardness of us trying to celebrate!"
Celebrate Being in addition to Doing: It's so tempting to ignore celebration because we didn't get as much done, or we didn't meet the target. But Doing is only one dimension. You can also celebrate Being.
One of the favorite celebrations from my friend Nam after our Write & Craft session: "I celebrate incompleteness and being okay with it".
This newsletter definitely feels like that. Let's celebrate it anyway.
Khuyen
ps: I invite you to join me in the practice: What do you want to be celebrated for? Let me know and we will celebrate!
A quote & a fun comic for this time
"Let us be wary of any revolution that isn’t threaded with an element of play, celebration, mystery, and humor. If it is primarily a grim struggle, then it may be no revolution at all." Charles Eisenstein
Along the line of celebration this week, this quote is a good reminder of what real change may look like for those of us who have a desire to make a difference in the world.
We have come so far, and there is a lot more to hope. Like this optimisically depressing comics, credit of leunic.
Cheers to a great week,
pss: looking to get some important work or thinking done? Join me in the daily Write & Craft. It has been really fun and focused with friends!