Anniversary (noun): a date that is remembered or celebrated because a special or notable event occurred on that date in a previous year.
A picnic on a grassy field in your hometown with all of your friends and family clad in red, white and blue. This a day of celebration, of remembrance; it is the Fourth of July.
The sun begins to set and so does your giddy anticipation. That gorgeous spectacle of colors against the night sky is the quintessential end to one of the most widely celebrated anniversaries in the United States.
Anniversaries, whether we recognize them as such or not, have embedded themselves into our culture.
Anniversaries are globally yet individually celebrated because they recognize one’s life, accomplishments and contributions up to that point.
What is it you celebrate? Do you celebrate the moments in life that capture you, or do you capture the moments worth celebrating?
The day you watched a loved one marry “the one,” a final goodbye, a national catastrophe and big moments in life are worth recognizing because they have captured us.
Be it in pride, affection, sorrow or remembrance, we as individuals pay special attention to these and never for a moment question the reasons.
Anniversaries are a lot of things, but one thing they are not is unimportant. They have an invisible power and sometimes an underlying meaning that can reunite families and bring a nation together.
Knowing this, the question then becomes “why?” We have built and been brought up in a society where anniversaries are not only commonplace, but so highly symbolic of triumph, resilience, love and passion that the “why” of it all dances along subconsciously.
When one researches the “why,” a profusion of information about our social species and references to a colonial nation respond.
What it comes down to is the desire to commemorate the moments that have captured us. We remember these precious moments in time as a nation or an individual because in some way they have impacted our life.
So celebrate, remember and enjoy the moments you experience because it could be something worth celebrating the next year.