Monday, March 09, 2015

Are Congratulations in order?

There comes a point in ones life when people start getting engaged, married and having children.  During this time it seems like life is full of selfies, lavish celebrations and endless congratulations.  Although these are definitely happy times, its seems that our generation is placing more and more emphasis on these milestones.  Thousands of dollars spent on rings, dresses, wedding reception etc, not to mention the countless photo ops and the sacrifices expected to be made by ones close friends and family.
For some people, their wedding day represents the most important event of their lives.  But if it were me, I would be pretty disappointed if that ended up being true.  Can you imagine your most proudest moment being when someone else decides to propose you? Does that validate you as a human being? How come we don't celebrate with such vigor and enthusiasm when people make successful leaps in their career? Lose 50 lbs? Become the master of their craft? Provide resources to areas of need? Those seem to be things that involve hard work and dedication, so congratulations would definitely be in order.  With respect to relationships, those who deserve congratulations should be the ones that have remained married for 10+ years and have had a supportive and honest union.  But we rarely see older couples celebrating their success or receiving recognition. Maybe if you only got to have a wedding celebration after you had a successful marriage for 10 years it might motivate people to work on their relationship for the reward at the end.  Let's be real, anyone can slap on a ring and squeeze on a dress, but not everyone can make it through the ups and downs of marriage and remain respectful and loving to their partner. 
I believe that if we celebrated the people trying to change the world, improve themselves, or work hard towards a worthwhile goals to the same extent, it might influence others to also strive to make progress in these areas.  This would have a more positive influence on the younger generation and perhaps make a significant change to society as a whole. Just food for though.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Salimah said...

Congratulations on another thoughtful post! I agree that we place too much emphasis on occasions that don't actually require much work. I am with you 100% on weddings. I would hope that people who spend lavishly on those occasions put at least three times the effort into planning and working on there marriage (although that does not often seem to be the case). I would even go a step further that congratulating someone on being knocked up is unnecessary - instead we should save the celebrations for when the child turns out to be a productive member of society, or at least not a serial killer.

March 11, 2015 at 11:23 AM  
Blogger salma said...

Haha yea that's another good example, although I don't know if id blame the parents for making a serial killer..I think sometimes it's just bad luck..thanks for the comment!

March 11, 2015 at 1:46 PM  

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