Celebrate good times

How do I celebrate? I was thinking about this question, and I felt like I haven’t taken the time to celebrate.

When I graduated from college, which was a huge milestone for me as someone who cares about education, I didn’t celebrate myself. My mom was very excited, she wanted to come with the whole family to my graduation ceremony but I had to tell her I wasn’t celebrating.

You may be wondering why? I made such a decision based on two facts that I had;

1. My friend didn’t have anyone coming to celebrate him
2. I can’t imagine all of my family in the same car traveling all together to my school.

On (1), knowing what it felt like to see everyone surrounded by their family while one has none, I cannot but imagine how he would feel, even if he’s not thinking about it consciously, what about the subconscious long term effect of such?

I don’t want him to feel lonely, I want him to be surrounded by the few friends who didn’t have their family around, and I don’t want some kind of situation where I will be tending to my family while he’s been left alone.

I don’t want him to feel alone!

On (2), the road to my school is like a road to hell, I can’t tell how I survived that road despite my numerous night travel and countless witness of accidents and bloodbaths.

I knew I was one of the lucky bastards who paved that road at dangerous hours, yet fortunate enough to never be involved in an accident. But my thought was “what if there was an accident when my family set out on that road, would they be as lucky as me?”

In situation like that, I usually presume a worst-case scenario, and I realized it’s not something favorable to me, so I just had to tell my mom not to come to my graduation.

So, I end up just celebrating graduation with my friends – the ones around.

I don’t celebrate my own birthday, and one of the reasons for that is because; over the years, it is a day that most people usually forget, so, I choose to also forget it since its a day that remind me how close I was to death.

In celebration, we are reeks of the biases for the good thing, yet, these things happened to use daily. Because of our affinity for the good stuff, when the bad things come, we usually don’t know how to celebrate them.

… forgetting that there is no good days without its bad ones.

I want to be someone who learns to appreciate the good and the not-so-good, and I realized the most reasonable way to be able to be aware of my bias is to celebrate both times or celebrate none.

As per this, I choose the latter, and since then, celebration wasn’t something I’m used to any longer.

While it is good to give oneself a pat in the back some times, I don’t want to be the one who is not aware of his ignorance by overreacting by his winnings.