Use the force to celebrate

Monday night during Monday Night Football (MFN) we finally got the debut of the new Star Wars "The Force Awakens" trailer.

While plenty has been said about the trailer, there are two other related videos that moved me more. 

The first is Daisy Ridley's (Linkedin is not a fan of Instagram embeds) reaction to seeing the trailer for the first time and the second is her co-star, John Boyega. The absolute joy in both of their reactions is priceless and profound. Profound because these two have worked, what, thousands of hours on this project only to be blown away by a 90-second sample of what they did? If you don't think J.J. Abrams has workplace culture down pat, watch those two videos again. 

When was the last time you cried with joy over a project you worked on, work or otherwise? When was the last time you were even 8% as happy as those two were with something you put out? I watch them react to the trailer and just feel like we are doing it wrong.

Why shouldn't we feel like they do every time we close a big deal? Why can't we celebrate after we give a great presentation, create art and share it, get a grade on a test we wanted, get a promotion, have a birthday, or anything that you feel has value in your life.

Why don't we celebrate it with that much gusto and emotion?

My guess is because we think there isn't time. We think there isn't time because as far as we all want to be from the industrial revolution, there is a model T to ship tomorrow - so, no time to celebrate. Because there is a new metric tomorrow, so today's win no longer matters, there just isn't time. 

How bout we call bullshit on that. 

I watch those videos and think if I felt like that after every day I shipped something, there wouldn't be much left to stop me. I see them celebrate and think what having that sort of joy as a continuum in my life would do for those around me. I know that important work matters but celebrating it matters more, so I think we should. 

You may think it is just a trailer, from just a movie that two actors got excited about. I see a pop culture moment that is reaching a critical mass that two human beings feel blessed to have worked on. We all have things in life we are blessed to do, the trick is to celebrate them each time you finish. 

My friend Pat reminded me this week that we all have a VERY small amount of time in the grand scheme of it all and when I see those Instagram videos, I think there is room for me to use more of it to celebrate the time we all get to do some amazing things.