People Celebration

Sorry if my last post seemed a little bleak. It wasn't intended to come across that way. It was more about me demonstrating a lesson that I have been learning on my personal journey through grief. In any case, it got me thinking about people I know who have passed away, and how in death we typically ignore any shortcomings they may have had and instead focus what made them special, unique, wonderful.

Frankly, it makes me sad that so many people who have already passed on never had the opportunity in life to hear the great things that people think/say about them in death. I do not have many regrets with regards to my father, because I know he knew how much I loved and respected him. Though, I do wish I had articulated it to him more fully, more regularly. But at his funeral all I could think about was how much I wished he could be there to hear all the great things people were saying about him and to see for himself how much he was admired and cared for.

Why do we wait until somebody dies to pay homage to that person?

It really is unfortunate. The fact that we are living, breathing organisms with the capacity to love automatically makes us special. And yet we so often let the opportunity to tell people how much they mean to us and what makes them particularly special fall to the wayside. Either that or we allow negativity to eat up all positivity and choose instead to focus on things we don't like. Come on, we're all guilty. I surely am. As an example, there is this guy on my Facebook friends list and every time he updates his status or makes any sort of comment I find myself seething - I just absolutely disagree to the core with nearly every point he tries to make. There have been times I've found myself so annoyed that I've almost deleted him, thinking that it would be better to just save myself the energy. After contemplating it further, though, I decided I would try to grow as a person and not just erase him. Alternatively, I am going to make an unprecedented effort to see the good. What makes him unique. Special. I know it exists. I've just been too distracted to see it.

Whatever the case, we need to tell people what we like about them and what makes them so special more often. In teacherspeak, if you want to see an increase in a desired behaviour, you provide positive reinforcement. More importantly than that, (because trying to change people doesn't often go over that well), if you believe in loving one another, expressing that and saying why you love a person is a good start. As a teacher probably my favourite technique to use in class (especially when things got dramatic - yes, in grade three) was "warm fuzzies." My students would write their names at the top of a piece of paper and their paper would get passed to each and every person in the class, who in turn would anonymously write one thing they really like about the student who owned the paper. Immediate results. Kids who had been having a tough day suddenly looked as though they'd won a million bucks. Kids with low self-esteem suddenly felt like superheroes. Let's face it, sometimes, people just want or need to hear that they're special.

So, all of that to say this: I think we need more of a people celebration in this crazy, individualistic world. Let's not wait until somebody dies to make them feel loved or to let them know what about them is lovely. Personally, I'd like for everybody to have a day. Birthdays are on the right track, but as I've gotten older I've noticed that they have become sort of anticlimactic. These days after the 500th "happy birthday" on Facebook it kind of feels like most people are just fulfilling a duty. Birthdays should be a celebration of the person who was born, but they aren't. At least, not to the extent I would like them to be! Wouldn't it be nice if everybody had one day out of the year, birthday or not, to just be celebrated and have hordes of people express to them all the reasons they add to the planet just by being alive? Everybody would have their own personal warm fuzzy day. That way, we would start to celebrate people in life as opposed to just death and really highlight the value that each person has within them.

********************************************************************

In some way, this is probably a fitting blog topic because today is Remembrance Day. I don't, by any means, agree with war, but I am forever grateful to those who fought and have given me the opportunity to live in a free nation. I'm also grateful to those who continue to do that for other nations. Today the celebration should start with them.

Lest we forget.