The only subscription I’ll never cancel

Dear Joy Seeker,

In 2012, I left Romania as a 22-year-old girl. My brother was 15.

I was leaving Bucharest, leaving home and life as we know it and in the midst of it all, I made him a promise: no matter where life takes us, we'll take one trip together every year. Just the two of us.

And so, a tradition was born.

Life, of course, did what life does.

We got older. Careers happened. Relationships happened. A pandemic happened. For a while, our annual trip disappeared.

But somehow, the promise didn't and last weekend, we brought it back.

My brother and I spent a few days in the Dolomites, climbing via ferratas, scrambling up mountains and discovering that some Italian trail markings are perhaps a little more… interpretive than we'd like.

There was a moment when we'd taken a wrong turn, still had a decent way to go and realised we had exactly one bottle of water left between us.

So we shared it. Along with our snacks, our complaints about endless paths going down, our questionable navigation skills and a lot of laughter.

And somewhere between clipping ourselves onto another steel cable and looking out at those ridiculous mountains, I realised: this is exactly why traditions matter.

We're not 22 and 15 anymore.

We're two adults with completely separate lives.

We've both changed enormously since that first trip.

But every time we come back to this tradition, we get to meet each other again.

Not just as the brother and sister we were, but as the people we've become.

And I think that's one of the gifts of our traditions: they give our relationship somewhere to return to.

In a life where almost everything changes, traditions say: this stays.

This dinner. This trip. This ridiculous Christmas game.

This Sunday phone call. This birthday breakfast. This song you always play.

This place you return to every summer.

Traditions also give us joy in advance.

Once something becomes "our thing," you don't only enjoy it while it's happening. You get to look forward to it.

And anticipation itself can be joyful - research has found that waiting for experiences can bring more pleasure and excitement than waiting for material purchases.

So perhaps traditions are a little bit like putting joy on subscription.

You know it's coming back and in a world obsessed with newness, maybe we underestimate the happiness of repetition.

Not everything needs to be new to feel alive.

Some things become more precious precisely because we've done them before.

🌟 3 Ideas for Creating More Joy This Week

1. Bring back one old tradition - think of something you used to love doing with someone. Text them: Should we bring this back?

2. Claim a weekday ritual - Tuesday pasta. Thursday wine. Saturday morning walk. Give an ordinary day something to look forward to.

3. Make a tiny Monday tradition - favourite coffee. One song on the commute. Flowers for your desk. Something that makes Monday unmistakably yours.

📚 2 Inspiring Resources

1. Book:The Ritual Effect, Michael Norton - more than yearly traditions, the Harvard professor talks about how everyday habits become rituals when we do them with intention.

2. Song:Sweet Disposition, The Temper Trap - here's one of my favourite traditions: every time I take off, I listen to this song. The melody is perfectly synced with the sound of the aeroplane wheels and there's something about this ritual that makes taking off an event I look forward to, every single flight.

🤔 This Week's Reflection Question

1. What do I look forward to every year, and what would I like to add?

Here's to joyful traditions and the people worth creating them with.

With joy,

Irina