In my blog post about celebration being the root of spiritual practice, I left out a significant reason we tend to celebrate in our lives:  accomplishment.  We don’t often think of it as a spiritual activity, but when you think about it it’s those things we put effort into, those successes we get excited about, which paint the clearest picture of the people we’re trying to be.  Those moments when we are so pleased that we’ve finished a task or reached a goal that we stop everything else and take time to celebrate are the moments where we recognize that we are changing and transforming ourselves for the better.

Then there’s the idea that taking time to recognize and savor our life experiences and accomplishments allows us to appreciate the beauty of life.  I would agree, and stopping to celebrate accomplishments and milestones in our lives forces us, in a way, to stop the frantic rush onward.  Celebrations become a moment to recenter ourselves, to readjust to the changes and progress we’ve made, before continuing the journey.  

And even more than that, celebrations are a measure of the people who are important to us.  The ones we gather to us, share our joy with, are the ones who are significant in our lives.  The people with whom we choose to celebrate are our community, our extended family, our sphere of influence.  They are our spiritual cohorts.

Taking the time to actually think about how and what we celebrate and who we celebrate those moments with is an activity with profound spiritual implications.