I recently celebrated my son becoming a Bar Mitzvah. It was so wonderful to celebrate it, or any joyous occasion with all your close family and friends. This joy is what we see on Facebook, including my own postings after my sons party, “it doesn’t get any better than this.” At the service, and after the party, I was truly filled with so much joy, pride and love. However, what people don’t talk about is how much perfection and elation they expect on any one special day. We want it to be perfect and have dreamed of this day for a very long time. We want total control, and can be disappointing when the little things don’t go how we envisioned them.
After the event, we can ruminate about the things that went wrong or we regret not being able to spend more time with certain people. Our brains are like velcro, sticking to unpleasant emotions, and wired to scan for the negatives in life. We put so much pressure on ourselves during this one special day, that it can be difficult to let things play out naturally. This experience can be a metaphor for life. When we do not accept the way things are, it can bring a lot of stress and disappointment. We can plan and plan, but ultimately, things are going to happen that are totally unexpected. Thinking that every day will go smoothly without any bumps is unrealistic. Multiple snow days resonating with anyone? The key is to accept them, and not fight against them, even if we do not necessarily like them.
During all this snow, we are forced to sit at home and stop all the regularly scheduled activities. We can see from Facebook that most of us are not happy. Instead of all the complaining, since we have no control, we can use this time to relax, spend quality time with our kids (I can say that, as I have older kids that do not bother me), and embrace the respite from our normal, over scheduled, hectic daily lives. (If we get fired, maybe it wasn’t the right job for us anyway :). As I said to my son in his my Bar Mitzvah speech, “Wishing for you to enjoy the happy wonderful parts of life, but also embracing the curveballs that life throws at you”. I noticed a big difference from my first sons Bar Mitzvah party to this recent one. I was able to let the small things go this time and fully enjoyed the moment exactly as it was in its entirety. Mazel Tov to me!