Figuring out what it means to celebrate what matters.
Episode 51 of the Make Saints podcast: “Celebrate”
the episode script
As we approached New Year’s Eve in 2020, all I saw on social media was celebration that the year was over. Compared with a year that was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, how bad could 2021 be?
Well, given how many of the exact same celebratory dumpster fire memes I saw the following New Year’s Eve; pretty bad, I’d say.
The real question I had from the beginning, is how is this really a celebration?
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I’m not looking to make anyone feel bad. Especially for the clarity of present hindsight. That year was tough. As was the next one. And, if we’re being honest, the one after that.
Those three years we spent from 2020 through 2022 were not easy.
And yet, all of this celebrating that the year is over and that the next one offers a clean slate… doesn’t it also feel incredibly common? Like, haven’t we thought every year was kind of a dumpster fire?
Other dumpster fires
On paper, the toughest year of my life should be 2005. That was the year my wife and I buried three grandparents, a godparent, and a mentor. It was also the year we got married and I developed a few really deep friendships.
Another year was 2008. I was looking for a new position after my first one out of seminary was ending, and the stress of it had me visiting the doctor with chest pains. I was thirty and afraid I was having a heart attack. It was also the year my daughter was born.
There is something about celebrating the end of a year we’ve decided is terrible that strikes me as strange and foolish. It isn’t just throwing the baby out with the bathwater, which is an odd phrase, actually, because it renders the baby into an inconvenience. It’s actually like erasing the baby’s existence from memory.
Reflection
All of this reflection on the new year may seem belated. But I’m about to celebrate my birthday. And being in my 40’s, I recognize the oddity inherent with celebrating such a milestone.
On the one hand, I’ve survived long enough to celebrate. Which is kind of an accomplishment.
It is also an age at which we reflect upon our youth and consider our younger selves to be kind of stupid. While also wistfully wishing we could go back and be stupid some more.
Celebrating something so arbitrary as the anniversary of the day we were born is at once silly and deeply profound. And that we can celebrate it with as much joy and gratitude alone as we can with other people, is perhaps, even more so.
Being old enough to value a life my younger self would have found incredibly boring is quite an achievement, isn’t it?
Grown Up
When I was little, I hated the question: what do you want to be when you grow up? I found the idea so ridiculous. Like, I’m 6. I have no useful data to make that decision for my future self! I’d be better off if you told me what I should do.
I also remember giving an unusual answer to such a ridiculous question. I’d say: to be a Dad. I kind of didn’t care what job I’d be doing. There’s a million things I could do! And then later, my young adult self was incredibly scared of raising a little human. But my six year-old self was wiser than any other version of me.
He thought raising a little human to be a decent person was the most important thing he could do with his life.
For my birthday, I want to thank that little kid for reminding this old man what is worth celebrating.
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I’m Drew Downs. Thanks for listening to Make Saints. Because (eternal) life is hard. And we could use all the help we can get.