Think of “celebration” and, if you’re like me, you think of athletes celebrating a win on the field. You think of a soccer team winning the Olympic gold medal and rushing the field, hugging, screaming…unabashed ecstasy.
But not all celebration involves such a spirited display. In fact, more often in life, a person’s reaction to amazing news is more subdued.
Consider this scene from the movie Pursuit of Happyness. Will Smith’s character is told by the firm he’s interning at that he has a full-time job as a broker. After much struggle, landing the job is quite an achievement. His response to the news? Stoic. Steady. Wet eyes.
Another example actually does come from the world of sports, but in the locker room, not on the field. Brandon Belt, a player on the San Francisco Giants, being told in spring training he had made the big league club. It’s in the first few minutes of this clip (embedded below). Rather than break out into cheering, Belt is quiet, and starts lightly crying. Why does he cry quietly here, but rush the field after his team win a game? Is it just the social / group dynamic?
Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book intriguingly titled Dancing In the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. I haven’t read it because I generally don’t like Ehrenreich, but a paragraph review of the book seems apropos:
It is a truism that everyone seeks happiness, but public manifestations of it have not always been free of recrimination. Colonial regimes have defined spectacles as an inherently “primitive” act and elders harrumph at youthful exultation. Social critic and bestselling author Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) teases out the many incarnations of sanctioned public revelry, starting with the protofeminist oreibasia, or Dionysian winter dance, in antiquity, and from there covering trance, ancient mystery cults and carnival, right up to the rock and roll and sports-related mass celebrations of our own day. “Why is so little left” of such rituals, she asks, bemoaning the “loss of ecstatic pleasure.” Ehrenreich necessarily delineates the repressive reactions to such ecstasy by the forces of so-called “civilization,” reasonably positing that rituals of joy are nearly as innate as the quest for food and shelter. Complicating Ehrenreich’s schema is her own politicized judgment, dismissing what she sees as the debased celebrations of sporting events while writing approvingly of the 1960s “happenings” of her own youth and the inevitable street theater that accompanies any modern mass protest, yet all but ignoring the Burning Man festival in Nevada and tut-tutting ravers’ reliance on artificial ecstasy. That aside, Ehrenreich writes with grace and clarity in a fascinating, wide-ranging and generous account.
In fact, more often in life, a person’s reaction to amazing news is more subdued.
I agree. I would like to jump up and down and celebrate more but I find that in life, many of the most meaningful moments of joy are quiet moments. Often gradual – not clear and definitive.
In fact, significant accomplishments which may bring the joy we are expecting are incremental and often contingent on a variable outside of our control. This is why we love stories and movies like the examples you shared.
i absolutely agree with the concept of positive attitude n thinking,which is the ultimate thing which matters in solving ,majority of issues in life on personal n professional front,grt article,well written n well presented!!
Loved this.
Certainly points to the fact that reality is a little more multi-faceted that the boxes we put it in – even from the little things we think we know down pat ie how we react to great news.
Sometimes celebration is premature. Just because Belt made the team he may have known that he still has a lot of work to do and that staying in the big leagues and being successful is the real goal and reward. But I do get what you are saying here. Nice post.
True.
I have experienced many such subdued ecstasies, and it was an amazing feeling. The same thing applies to negative scenarios as well. When we hear news that we do not want to hear, often times, we tend to imbibe the horrific expulsion of feelings until they get mellowed into soft thoughts and expressions.