Celebrations held a fascination and I was curious.. Often, they were occasioned by achievements of people around me or annual festivals. There were, of course, other annual features like birthdays that briefly evoked a call for celebration, but I was surrounded by people who preferred a prayer and an offering of thanks, over a party. In my early years, I was more spectator than active participant.

I grew up in a context that valued the underplaying of oneself and extolled self-deprecation, modesty and humility. Expression was restrained, edited and self-conscious. One carried a sense of self-doubt (and self-hate?) – the feeling that I wasn’t good enough, or that I would be defeated by shifting goalposts. I grew up with a somewhat disapproving view of overt, exuberant acts of celebration.

My earliest celebrations were in sport. Victories. Unchecked, involuntary smiles, beaming eyes, struggling to hold back a shout, grudging acceptance of congratulations, sloshing internally in liquid joy, alternating between scampering within the confines of the arena without purpose and slowing down willfully in an apparent act of self-restraint. There were fleeting moments of unbounded joy and minutes of intense awareness, indelibly etched in memory and replayed many times later. I was caught in a sea of inhibition and left wondering what truly celebrating would involve.

Did Crusoe celebrate?

I wondered about Robinson Crusoe marooned on an island. What might he have celebrated? Overcome with hunger, stumbling upon first edible berry or nut? Or when, at every step, he found the means to protect, feed, and shelter himself? Or, when  surrendering to his loneliness, he devised ways to amuse himself with small games and  victories against his previous best? Would he have shouted with joy? Would he have been self-conscious  and held himself in check (lest he shock the trees and animals; Or, what if they mocked him?). Might he have run to the shore and called out to anyone who would care to hear?

Would Crusoe’s joy have been any less because there was none with him in those moments? Would it have grown manifold if there was indeed someone to join in?

When the ice Borg melted: The Centre Court moment

Since television entered our lives in the mid 1970s, year after year, Wimbledon provided an up-close view of the winner in their moment of triumph… Ice Borg melted, and dropped to his knees after the winning shot. Many before and after him have come to mark their own successes with characteristic expressions and gestures – unrehearsed – the momentary cry at game, set, match, the quick scan of the crowds to locate near, dear ones, scampering across to share hugs and kisses and then back to the players seat for silent and solitary contemplation while awaiting the trophy.

Face covered with towel, clothes drenched from the exertions, body loose and limp, I imagine the winner, in that moment, hearing the thunderous applause and the buzz as if it were in the far distance. There is the intensity of the moment – a compacted coming together of all the pain, effort, self-restraint, punishing routines, disappointments and doubts of the days, weeks and months preceding – all encapsulated in that instant. Bathed in sweat and tears, feeling full, light and empty all at the same time. in those few  moments, there is no thought, no new purpose, only savoring of the present, a new momentous instant that had just arrived.

How do I know this?  I know the feeling. Mine may not have been the grand stage but I have had my time on a court, if not Centre Court. I didn’t exult. I don’t remember celebrating in a visible, public way with the glare of eyes on me.

Some reflections

While I can visualize solitude as part of the overall movement of celebration, it is hard to imagine celebration under conditions of isolation. Crusoe lingers in the mind – having none to share the feats of survival, genius and endurance, and the joys and relief that came with it.

Crusoe’s situation suggests that for celebration, others are an integral part of any celebration. Celebration impels me to connect with others – to seek out, reach out, connect, and share, To share a celebratory moment is to include, to value and to affirm the other. It underscores the fact that man is not an island; it is inherent in the nature of man to relate, that success and achievement, growth and development, change and continuity – all movement – are conjoined in a web of interdependence and in a play of shared destiny.

Celebrations involve expression of joy, satisfaction, exultation… and savoring the moment. Some, in our fullness, assert our own effort and extol our heroism, while denying others their due; others then, are at best props and a ready audience for our boastful tales of success, conquest, wins. Some tend to underplay their own part in their success and amplify the contributions of others, preferring humility over what they would disapprovingly label as pride and conceit.

Such celebratory expression is a proclamation not of pride, vanity or arrogance but of the power of will, the translation of potentials, an awareness and acknowledgement of gifts that one has received, and the valuing of capacity building that has made things possible. It is an act of self-affirmation.

So, for celebrations not to be reduced to mere exercises in indulgent excess, it must include an element of reflection. It is in this reflection that the fullest significance of the movement that occasioned the celebration is fully revealed. It is in such reflection that one see’s the distance traveled, what the journey has been, of what has ended and what new beginnings beckon. Hope, path and resolve come together, fatigue gives way to new energy… A new voyage is then truly begun. It is that moment on Centre Court we spoke of, unpacked.

Without celebration, the next adventure doesn’t present itself readily!

Celebration marks the passage of time, and in some sense heralds an arrival – of a moment. Every moment then is an opportunity … the dawn of day, the birth of night, the onset of seasons, every moment in the unfolding drama of life…

Photo from Pexels