How Often Do You Celebrate?

I’m kind of obsessed with celebrating.

As I’m writing this, it’s May 17 and Tom and I are celebrating the 28th anniversary of our first date.

If there’s a record of all our OpenTable reservations, you’ll probably find the word “anniversary” in there at least six times a year.

We celebrate the obvious ones like our wedding anniversary, but also less obvious ones:
the anniversary of when Tom sold his archery school,
when we got engaged,
when we bought our first classic car…

You get the idea.

But I don’t think the magic is really in the dinner reservations.

I think the magic is in the remembering.

Today we remembered how our first date almost never happened.

I was a cheeky, flirtatious 29-year-old.

Tom was an insecure redhead from Alaska who didn’t really know how to date…

…so he said goodbye when I thought we were going out.

I made some kind of smarty-pants comment, and thankfully he told me to wait 10 minutes.

He came back with an Arizona iced tea bottle — the kind with the pretty flowers on it — filled with fireweed for a bouquet.

The date got off to a much better start after that, and we’ve been together ever since.

This year, he found another Arizona iced tea bottle, picked the closest flower we have to fireweed here in Loveland, and gave me a bouquet that reminded me of those early days and all the beautiful days since then.

When we first started dating, we had zero money, so we did a lot of hiking — partly because it was free.

This morning, we spent hours hiking beautiful places close to home.

We stopped to really notice the patterns of the clouds and sunlight in the sky, listened to a heron tree with what sounded like a chaotic bird nursery inside it, and explored little nooks and crannies of the Big Thompson River that flows not far from our house.

Later, we walked our wild and messy two-acre yard admiring what’s growing this year, talking about what used to grow there, and deciding where to plant native seeds this fall.

Tonight we’ll go out for a nice dinner — the more traditional anniversary celebration.

All of this to commemorate a first date.

Honestly, I usually forget May 17. Tom is much better at remembering this milestone than I am.

But I’m so glad he does.

Because these celebrations give us a reason to stop.

To remember our beginnings.
To notice our lives now.
And to dream about the future together.

My superpower is to stop and celebrate as things are happening.

I’m not one of those people who need everything to be done and perfect before I celebrate.

I celebrate as many milestones as possible for anything that matters.

And not all celebrations are big.

Sometimes it’s a nice dinner.
Sometimes it’s me throwing my hands in the air yelling “WOO HOO!” when someone on my team accomplishes something hard.
Sometimes it’s simply stopping for a moment to say:
“Hey… I’m really proud of you.”

I also don’t need something to be finished before I celebrate it.

Sometimes it’s celebrating a friend writing the first chapter of a book instead of waiting until all 300 pages are finished.

Or celebrating your first 10-mile run instead of waiting until you finish the marathon.

I think a lot of us miss opportunities for joy because we keep moving the celebration farther down the road… or we don’t even stop long enough to notice that something worth celebrating just happened.

We tell ourselves we’ll celebrate when it’s completely finished.
When it’s guaranteed.
When it’s perfect . . .or we just quietly move on to the next thing.

But life is mostly made up of things that are still unfolding.

And honestly, I think part of the joy comes from remembering how impossible it looked from the start line.

Talking about the journey.

Laughing about all the things that went wrong along the way.

Dreaming about what’s ahead.

That’s the part I never get tired of.

Are you good at celebrating?

What do you celebrate that other people might overlook?

Or do you move straight to the next thing without stopping long enough to enjoy what just happened?

Maybe this week, you can find something small to celebrate that you normally wouldn’t even think about.

And maybe the real gift won’t be the celebration itself…

Maybe it will be the remembering.

Tell me what you celebrated — I’d love more ideas to add to my bag of celebration tricks!

With love,
Ariel