Just something I was thinking about today, and I’m curious if I’m an outlier, or if I’m on the same page as everybody else.
It’s a big time of the year for graduations and weddings and it got me thinking about all the ceremonies. They are often long and drawn out and VERY expensive for whoever’s paying the bill, and I can’t stand them.
Just the idea of sitting for hours while somebody I don’t know talks and talks and talks until we finally get to the “I do” or the passing of the diplomas/awards that we came to see.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the celebration. I’m more than happy to come out and congratulate you on your achievement and make some good memories with friends and family, but why can’t we just skip to that part instead of sitting through a series of lectures?
I even skipped my own college graduation because I didn’t see any point in making me and my family sit through the ceremony. They know I graduated, and I don’t need some big expensive to-do and a spotlight to validate that.
But, we keep doing them, and keep making them bigger and more elaborate than before, so it makes me wonder if people actually appreciate these ceremonies or if it’s just something we do because that’s how it’s been done.
I think culture is important, it’s the glue that binds communities and people, rituals and ceremony are important parts of culture. I think we need to be very careful about not allowing our culture, our ceremonies and rituals, from becoming commercialized like weddings and some holidays have become, I think most graduation ceremonies are still pretty low key even if they’re often stupidly long with no consideration for the people watching, you walk across a stage, people sit and watch I wouldn’t consider that a “big expensive to-do” and as much as we like to pretend public social validation isn’t needed study of the human mind says otherwise.
Culture matters and we need to embrace and participate in it, we need to be part of the group, it does matter to us as individuals and us as a society, it’s something to have in common and that’s so powerful. I don’t think it would serve us to get rid of these things wholesale