Celebrate the Me, the You, and the We

"How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself
are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word."
-Don Ruiz in The Four Agreements

I celebrate myself today.

In the midst of preparing for large events, transitioning into new phases of our lives, or stressing because of work, it's easy to forget how awesome we are.

In the spirit of finishing finals, I reflected on how great it is to celebrate one's self each day. After I finished my hardest final today, I took a picture of the twelve novels that I had read for one of my classes (yes, I'm a dork). But isn't that great! Twelve novels. Maybe it's not so great, but I can choose to believe that it is. And by choosing to give myself lots of credit for it, I feel empowered.

Capitalism...football...and American Idol. In America, we strive to be the greatest. Competitiveness thrives, and there’s always someone who we need to be superior to in order to get ahead. Judging our own abilities against the talents of others can be good only if it serves as a catalyst for increased work ethic. But we often get disappointed when we compare ourselves to others, because we realize that there is always someone who is just a little smarter than us, or funnier, or more athletic, etc. So why compare ourselves? It amazes me to realize that we are all extraordinary individuals. Each one of us has a completely unique set of accomplishments that no one else has. And each one of us has an assembly of physical and internal characteristics that is completely self-exclusive. Not one organism on planet Earth shares the exact same genetic makeup with you (clones don’t count).

Walt Whitman knows what I'm talking about. In Leaves of Grass, his poem "I Celebrate Myself" elaborates beautifully on this idea. And Hawthorne lifted his brow in the nineteenth-century as he wondered why "it is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiences, than of their available gifts" in The House of the Seven Gables. Our insecurities govern our thoughts and our actions so much that we forget what amazing creatures we truly are. You have given a piece of yourself to everything you have done and everywhere you have been, and so you are connected to all the goals that you have achieved. Any time you walk up the stairs (why does this kill me no matter how good of shape I'm in?), show someone affection, or read a new book, celebrate yourself! When a group of girls rode up an 1100 ft high mountain on bikes with me last week, I told them that we needed to be way more impressed with ourselves than we already were. We are beasts.

When we're not celebrating ourselves, we should be celebrating others. Or, as Dr. Heather Holleman points out in her Live with Flair blog entry(http://livewithflair.blogspot.com/2010/04/ask-this-question.html), "when you can't be in the spotlight, be the spotlight." Shine a light on someone else's beauty! By celebrating others we can destroy jealousy, battle insecurity, and conquer inferiority.

Mother's day is coming up. Moms, you should give yourselves an infinite number of pats on the back. Your endless supply of selfless devotion is absolutely astonishing. Those who haven't mothered a child should celebrate these domestic overseers for anything and everything they have done, and thank them with their utmost sincerity.

Life will be a party if we celebrate ourselves and others.

Let no tiny triumph escape your radar.

I am super awesome for writing this.