#50: The Celebratory Cake

Today is a day for celebration. This is our 50th blog post; it is Katie’s twenty-first birthday; and I just handed in two 3000 word essays. It’s time for cake.

This cake, however, was for another housemate’s birthday, another celebration. It seems like the whole world is turning twenty-one in a matter of weeks. I think it’s because twenty-one is a ‘special birthday’, so as each friend grows a year older and hits this magic number, suddenly we have to pay attention.

But why is twenty-one any different from twenty? Why, for that matter, is twenty and 364 days any different from twenty and 365?

We select things to celebrate — weekends, birthdays, anniversaries, mother’s day — creating a hierarchy of days; a hierarchy that implies a normal, bog-standard Monday is nothing to celebrate.

But Mondays can be great. You could have cake on Monday. You could have cake with someone on Monday. Or you could just smile as you walk to your lecture, celebrating the air, or the sky, or the feeling of footsteps on the pavement.

There’s no pressure to an ordinary Monday, so any small moment can bring greater happiness due to a lack of expectation. Whereas a specific anticipated event, a 50th blog post for instance, might not deliver. It sits on the calendar, marked out in red pen. We ruminate, we prepare, we imagine what it might be like, so much so, that we forget to truly celebrate.

So as you can probably tell, I am celebrating our blog’s 50th post spontaneously. I am eating copious amounts of cake and I am splurging my sugar-induced thoughts onto the page.

And I hope you will celebrate spontaneity and continue reading our explorations and diversions about ordinary objects, our own everyday celebrations.