by Lori Deschene
“Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!” ~Amanda Bradley
In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll coined the term “un-birthday” which means exactly what you might expect—a day you celebrate that isn’t actually your birthday. You might not feel inclined to send out evites and buy a helium tank in honor of a non-milestone, but there’s something to this idea.
We often live life waiting for reasons to get excited. We save the good china for a special occasion, reserve fancy clothes for a yet-to-be-determined big event, and generally wait for moments that will justify festivity. Then when we reach those events, the act of planning—making sure everything is perfect, and everyone is happy—can create more stress than joy.
Conventional wisdom suggests you should live every day like your last, but maybe that isn’t the answer either. If it were your last, you might quit your job, drain your savings account, and take dangerous risks because you’d have no reason to be cautious.
Perhaps a better suggestion is to treat every day as a new opportunity to be happy. A new selection of moments when you can smile, enjoy the little things, and find reasons to rejoice. Not because your time is almost up, but simply because it feels good. And why not feel good right now?
Celebrate something today. Anything!
Did you parallel park really well after work? Bust out the champagne!
Did your daughter say please and thank you? You’re an awesome parent with a gifted child—write it on a cake!
Does your best friend seem relaxed in your home? What better reason to grab a big bouquet of flowers?
You don’t need a calendar to tell which days are special. You just need a moment and the capacity to appreciate it.
Do happy. It’s something you’re due.
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