It’s no big secret that the last two years have been a shock to the system. Cast into times most unprecedented, not a single one of us could have foreseen any of it, any of the madness that ensued after those five words changed our lives forever.
YOU MUST STAY AT HOME.
My hypothetical grandchildren simply would not believe the sad truth of police shooing civilians away from park benches, that ‘DO NOT ENTER’ tape was wrapped around deserted playgrounds like a grisly crime scene, that we had to queue outside supermarkets as if their harshly lit aisles were the most surreal VIP area, filled with arrowed pathways and polite-but-firm notices that absolute essentials would be limited to ONE PER CUSTOMER, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
The saddest reality of it all though, is how much we’d taken for granted before the world became a ghost town. The cocky assumptions we strode around with, in ‘the before times’. That our jobs were safe, that dinner with friends was only a matter of scheduling. That travelling, whilst still somewhat of a luxury, was a possibility. That we still had time. That one day was promised to our future selves, because why wouldn’t it be?
We’re often guilty of feeling as though we have to ‘earn’ nice things. Weekdays at work are rewarded with two days of ‘freedom*’ (*after adult admin, of course. Housework waits for no-one.) If we just make it through this busy week, if we just lose that weight, if we just finish our to-do lists, if we just earn enough, get that promotion, tick off that milestone, then we are ‘allowed’ to enjoy life and the pleasures we find in it.
The one caveat to this – a special occasion.
You want to eat cake for breakfast? To wear that suit, that dress, to dare feel good about yourself? To see that loved one who lives ever so slightly too far away? To do something simply to make yourself or someone else feel happy and loved and special.
Well, you can, and nobody can say a thing about it, and no guilt needed because it’s a special occasion!
It’s as though we save things, pent up and yearning for release, and only let them out when it’s societally acceptable. She can feel beautiful on her wedding day, he can express emotion on Valentine’s Day, we can use the nice tableware when guests are over. We can treat our inner children to the most playful, raucous FUN on birthdays or hen parties or stag dos, with costumes and glitter and games and gathering our favourite people together in a celebration of love and nostalgia and mutual appreciation because it’s allowed. She can relax on Mother’s Day. He can watch the football on Father’s Day. We can eat and drink and be merry together at Christmas and calories don’t count on holiday.
There’s a reason that these moments mean so much. We get to say ‘these are the people and the food and the hobbies and the things that I love’, and surround ourselves with them for one glorious day. We get to be frivolous and foolish and freely expressive. We are permitted to just exist as we are, and enjoy these allowances, these elements of ourselves as people, wholly and unashamedly because we can.
But then, what happens when the special occasion never comes? When we’d pinned these permissions and guilty pleasures on days that we had assumed would roll around with the same guarantee as the sunset does each day?
The truth of living through a pandemic, is that we have been faced with the macabre reality of our own morbidity far more frequently than is healthy. Suddenly, milestone birthdays have been spent within our own four walls, without the familiar camaraderie of singsong and candles. Life has passed us by through screens, planes sat desolate on the tarmac, restaurant kitchens gathering dust. Wedding dresses and garments we were ‘saving for best’ hung untouched in wardrobes.
And for some, their last day came before one day could.
How many dreams were on pause until they felt they’d earned the right to chase them? How many places were on bucket lists, how many ‘guilty pleasures’ had they lined up in their heads to choose the next time it was appropriate for them to do so?
As the Mad Hatter and the Mad March Hare said to Alice, “Statistics prove, that you’ve one birthday. Imagine, just one birthday every year. But there are 364 unbirthdays.”
There’s sense in the nonsense, literally and figuratively. Why save for best, for special occasions, for rainy days, when there are so many other days in between?
Misery and monotony are not obligatory. In a world where nothing is promised, life IS the special occasion. We have lived through enough restrictions without placing more upon our own lives in the form of this binding, unkind notion that we have to be deserving of joy to receive it.
This is why women wore ballgowns to get vaccinated! Why ‘aimless fun’ is SO crucially important in our day to day, why even the littlest things are so enormously meaningful! We are not promised our one day. Show emotion. Embrace vulnerability. Silliness is not criminal, and productivity is not tied to value. It is enough just to want to feel good without justification.
Take a moment to think of one thing you’d love to do. Not achieve. Not earn. To enjoy. To say. To wear.
How many places would you love to visit, guilty pleasures you’d love to indulge in, bridges you want to mend, love waiting to be declared..but you’ve been putting it off, or irrational guilt kicks in that you don’t deserve it, you don’t have the time, you can’t justify it. Something you’ve been saving for one day.
We are lightning-fast to criticise ourselves for the most mundane of things. For not answering an email quickly enough, for missing the bus, for not wearing make-up on a Zoom call, for an untidy home, a crying baby, weight gain, shedding tears, being slow to reply to a text. The reality is, we are trying our best. We are playing a hundred roles from parent to partner to child to manager to housewife to man of the house to breadwinner to teacher to therapist to friend…
If you don’t think you’ve ‘earned’ the right to revel in whatever it is that came to mind upon reading this – think again. You’re doing the best you can, and that alone is good enough. You woke up today, you are here, you are alive, and you are YOU, and that is a special occasion.
