Celebration vs. Enjoying the Ride

Smell the roses

Most of us have moments when we celebrate the completion of a journey. It might be finishing a project, a new year, a birth, a marriage, or completing a trip—anything that has taken time, effort, or emotional investment. It’s a kind of finish line, the end of a stretch of labor or waiting.

Back in my farming days, I’d often let out a small yippee when a field was finally prepped or a harvest wrapped up. It felt earned. But looking back, I sometimes wonder—was that really the best time to celebrate? Or should celebration have been part of the work itself?

This morning, with the cold keeping me indoors, that thought came back to me and led to this post. If time really only exists in the present moment, shouldn’t we be enjoying the process as much as the completion?

I’ve worked on many projects over the years—some alone, some with family, some with friends. And what stands out most to me now isn’t the moment they were finished, but the time spent together. The conversations. The shared effort. Even something as simple as fresh air and sunshine. There’s a kind of celebration in just being able to do the work at all.

Time already moves fast. If we save all our celebration for the moment something ends, that moment is usually brief. We may be cheating ourselves out of a deeper, more lasting joy.

Think about taking a trip or an outing. Most of the time, we don’t want it to end as quickly as it does. What if we viewed some of our commitments in the same way? If we stopped treating them as things to “get through,” could we find more good within them?

I’ve come to see this as a way of reinforcing memory—by fully taking in what we’re experiencing while it’s happening, not just afterward when it becomes a story we tell ourselves. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate when something is finished. It just means the celebration doesn’t have to wait.

Maybe it’s what we’ve always meant by “stopping to smell the roses”—letting joy walk alongside the journey, instead of saving it for the end. I am not fully there as of yet; I am still a work in progress.

There will be a one-day pause till the next post, to percolate a bit.