I really don’t understand celebrating non-accomplishments. And I will start off fair here, I’m not actually a huge fan of “celebration” in general. But still, I do understand celebrating accomplishments. For the most part I’m pretty passive when people want to commemorate a whole lot of nothing, though on occasion I will protest. And rant about it, like so.
Many people like to have excuses for their actions. “I want to go to happy hour with friends... I know! It’s admin assistant day! Yay!” Yeah... that’s not necessary. I’m an unapologetic guy, so if I want to get together with friends for happy hour, I’ll just ask them if they are free. I have never done so, but I certainly would. Creating false excuses for an activity makes it a false activity. It’s a time consuming and absurdly unnecessary step.
Birthdays exist in a grey area here, because some are legitimate milestones. But at a certain point, how many of them really matter? 18, 21, 25, 30, 40, 50, 75... 90, 91, 92, 93. For a solid 70 years every decade is the only time I’d actually see it as a borderline achievement for celebration. You only get to think of not dying as an accomplishment if dying is the more likely scenario. Think hospitals or war zones, or a hospital in a war zone. That pretty much covers the list.
There are some other grey area accomplishments in my book. Graduating high school, for instance. Where I grew up most of us did graduate, it was an expected result of being in school. So was it really an accomplishment? In my eyes no, so no reason to dwell on it. But again, it’s an actual accomplishment/milestone of a kind, so I completely understand other people wasting valuable time and money.
What I really don’t understand at all is celebrating complete non-accomplishments. If everyone gets the same trophy at the end of a tournament, none of the trophies matter. You can get ice cream or a cookie afterward; but let’s not have a party. If you come to work on time everyday you don’t deserve a pat on the back, you did your job.
I guess what really bugs me is that if you celebrate things that don’t really matter just because, you are doing a disservice to every celebration that has a purpose. If you get a promotion you deserve to commemorate the moment because you achieved something. But what if you had a party after you didn’t get fired during your probationary period? Doesn’t that cheapen the later accomplishment?
Then there are the children, the dirty, dirty children. I’m on record as not being that great with kids. I’m not inept, which again should not be seen as an accomplishment. But we inundate our kids with these absurd congratulations and then they grow up thinking that they are automatically wonderful. No you aren’t! You are automatically mediocre or worse, but you can strive to be better. You are SUPPOSED to strive to be better. I was in an asinine basketball league as a kid that didn’t keep score. If you can’t win, why in the bleepingly bleep bleep would you bleepingly bleep bleep even bleeping play! I prefer not to reinforce mediocrity. That’s why I tend not to be a repeat customer to shitty restaurants. Don’t be a repeat customer to shitty children.
So if you want to celebrate nothing, by all means do so. Just don’t include me, you know how riled I can get. If you want to reward or celebrate something of value I’ll reluctantly play ball, if you want delegitimize value for the future I probably won’t. And then I’ll rant about it.
I’ve had a lot of caffeine.
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