A man and his wife were dining at a table in a plush restaurant, and the husband kept staring at an old drunken lady guzzling her whisky as she sat alone at a nearby table. Finally, the wife asked, “Do you know her?” “Yes,” said the husband with a sigh, “She’s my ex-wife. She took to drinking right after we divorced seven years ago, and I hear she hasn’t been sober since.” “My God!” said the wife in astonishment, “I can’t believe she’s celebrating for that long.”
It’s a joke but it exposes an underlying truth about how we have come to view celebration: as a rare phenomenon, and something that we are supposed to indulge in only occasionally. So we celebrate annual events like birthdays, anniversaries and festivals like Diwali, Christmas and Id. Or special occasions such as weddings and graduations. The rarer the occasion, the bigger is the celebration. This really means that the commonplace, everyday events of life don’t get celebrated. This, unfortunately, is the real joke.
Life, as we know it, has given us millions of reasons to celebrate every day. And yet we hardly even notice, let alone appreciate them. Just the rising of the sun each morning is reason enough to celebrate. That’s what Oprah Winfrey meant when she said, “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
For the 6th anniversary issue, we invited two people who have mastered the art of celebrating life, to share tips and tricks so that we too can learn to praise and celebrate life.
First, Mark Black teaches us why it is more sensible to celebrate the journey rather than just the destination; while we stay with the former for much longer, the latter is too short-lived. His ideas are easy to understand, yet have the potential to make you view your life differently. Read the full story here.
In the follow-up story, celebrated fashion designer Wendell Rodricks takes us through one day in his life. Based in a remote village in Goa, Wendell convinces us, through his profoundly visual narration, why life is simply beautiful. His story is a real-life example of how we can celebrate each day.
Once you grasp the essence of these stories, you will see the grand miracles of your daily life, and will know how to celebrate every single day of your life—best of all, you won’t need any whisky to go along.