Celebrations

KFC, Ecclesiastes, neurochemicals, and reasons to keep going

Little Salad Shop, 2/15/2023

Celebrating doesn’t come naturally to me. 

When I was nine or ten years old, I went to Vacation Bible School at a nearby church and heard some nice older lady teach The Parable of the Lost Coin. In summary, it’s a story about a woman who has ten coins. She loses one of them, so she turns her whole house upside down and searches obsessively until she finds it. When she finds it, she’s so excited that she invites all of her neighbors to come celebrate with her. 

I guess that the nice older lady asked if anyone had any questions, because I remember raising my hand and saying something like, “but as a financial decision, this doesn’t make any sense. Throwing a party probably costs, like, three coins. Why would she celebrate finding money by spending more money?” 

The poor teacher was very flustered because she couldn’t give a good explanation, but the answer to my question is actually fairly obvious. The coins in the story are most likely denarii, equal to about 10 days’ wages for an average laborer. So when Jesus told this story, the original listeners would have understood that he was describing a situation more like throwing a dinner party because you got a $1000 bonus. 

But my point is that, even at a very young age, I was skeptical of celebrations.¹ 

The fall semester of my junior year was easily the worst part of my college experience. A series of struggles left me wondering what I was doing at Yale, how much longer I could keep going, and where I could go instead.

I went home for October break, and one night I was running errands with my dad when we started talking about my return to Yale. 

I was trying to hold back tears because I just didn’t want to go back. Leaving for Yale always felt like standing on the edge of the pool before yet another morning practice during high school—knowing that the water would be just as cold and the day would be just as long and dark as it was yesterday—and every cell in my body wanting to crawl back into bed for a long, long time. 

I don’t remember where we went that night, but we must not have gone grocery shopping because we sat in the parked car for at least an hour after we got home. 

In the early 1990s, my dad was an army officer stationed in South Korea. My mom had been stationed in Korea too, and she loved it—she loved the people, the culture, the food, the church—everything. She talks about Korea frequently and enthusiastically; growing up, I had no doubt that living in Korea was one of the happiest seasons of her life. 

But that night, my dad told me that the base he was stationed at was what the military calls a hardship post. Whether it’s because of the physical environment, the social climate, or the stresses of political unrest, some bases are harder than others—and every soldier had to take a turn being deployed to a hard place. 

So while my mom absolutely loved Korea, many soldiers struggled there. My dad was a young man alone in a foreign country far from home—and he knew that feeling of standing on the edge of freezing water, wondering how you can make yourself keep going. 

Every month or so, he was assigned to spend all night on duty. Which was a challenge—but he always promised himself KFC afterwards. His monthly pilgrimage on a bus to the KFC in Seoul—where he treated himself to some greasy, comforting American food—became a ritual that gave him a sense of progress and accomplishment in what otherwise would have felt like an endless, joyless trial. 

I needed to find my KFC, he explained. I had such a deep dread of Yale’s campus because I only associated it with struggle—and I needed to teach myself that there was joy there, too. I saw Yale as a massive, overwhelming thing that was happening to me, but I needed to break it down into the milestones that I could achieve and celebrate.

At the time, I found his advice frustrating. He didn’t understand that Yale was never about the assignments, it’s about taking on more than you can possibly handle and then stretching yourself until you can survive. Doing well in my classes was actually the only thing I felt confident about; I was miserable because doing well in class wasn’t enough. There was something else I was supposed to be doing and someone else I was supposed to be. I wasn’t “doing Yale” the way everyone else was. 

Taking myself out to lunch wasn’t exactly going to solve my deep-seated dread. 

But years later, I think he has a point. Sometimes you have to hack your brain chemistry.

Some work directly produces a natural reward. You go through the work of cooking a delicious meal, and when you eat it your brain releases dopamine. You run a marathon, you’re high on endorphins and then swirling with oxytocin as your friends hug and congratulate you. After a lot of work, your brain is saying, “That was great! This was worth the work.”

But sometimes the rewards are less obvious. In my dad’s case, deployment to Korea was a matter of doing his duty as a soldier and maintaining international security. He knew it mattered. But his brain and body didn’t feel that. No matter how important he believed it was, the benefits were abstract and intangible. 

KFC, on the other hand, is warm, crispy, and delightful. And by making KFC the reward for the task—teaching himself that fried chicken was the natural result of another month’s night duty—he could feel the truth that it was worth the struggle. 

As the book of Ecclesiastes asks, “What do workers gain from their toil?” (3:9). All our work will eventually be forgotten, we’re all going to die, so why does it matter? This is what the author of Ecclesiastes can say for certain: “This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot.” (5:18).  

The meaning of our work is unclear, but what is clear is that food and drink are good and our work can be satisfying. And in the modern context, where “working=eating” is rarely obvious but still usually true, celebrations allow us to accurately connect our work to the good of the world. 

Historically, I’ve tended to feel like I need to keep working and don’t have time to celebrate. But if I don’t celebrate my work, don’t enjoy the simple good of the world, I’m denying myself reasons to keep working. The paradox is that if our work is too important for celebrations, we won’t feel like it actually matters.

As a result, work environments with an established culture of work without celebration are deeply concerning. No one commits to sleepless nights and stressful days for nothing. The only motivations strong enough to force people to work without reward are unhealthy ones like pride, fear, and shame. A workplace where leaders rely on those abstract, disordered motivations to drive their team is one that exploits their workers’ deepest fears and desires. 

In October 2021, I felt like Yale was that kind of environment. This is why my dad’s story about going to KFC seemed so unhelpful. I was motivated by insecurity and existential dread; suggesting that a nice snack would make it all seem worthwhile felt as ridiculous as proposing that a meth addict switch to skittles. 

But I was willing to try anything. In the spring semester of my junior year, I (reluctantly) started a tradition of getting a wrap from the Little Salad Shop after major deadlines. I now have a series of beautiful memories of sitting in the sunshine in my common room after midterm presentations or final projects, eating my salads, sleepy, alone, and proud of my work. Enjoying the peace that comes from knowing that I did something really hard, and I did it well. 

Eventually, I learned how to get through college for (mostly) healthy reasons. But a 2018 Harvard Business Review article found that elite organizations, like the ones where so many of my classmates work, “deliberately set out to identify and recruit ‘insecure overachievers,’” with some companies even using this exact language in their internal communications. Inadequacy is profitable because no one works harder than someone whose entire self-worth depends on a job well done. The saddest part of this is the irony: insecure overachievers just want to feel valued. They want to feel good enough. But they aren’t actually hired because of their competence— they’re hired because insecurity will drive them to do the things you could never pay a healthy person to do.

Of course, there are some struggles we’re called to endure for rewards we won’t see in this life. There are times when we’re motivated by something beyond us, a greater purpose that enables us to persevere with joy even in suffering. There’s no KFC on the battlefield. 

But that’s not every job.

Recognizing the true challenge of our work, and rewarding ourselves for it, is what gives our work legitimate value. When we work to enjoy the fruits of our labor, rather than being driven by vague fears and desires, we protect the purpose of our work. Working out of fear and anxiety is self-indulgent, not productive. So celebrations keep us accountable: we can work hard for good reasons now, and we’ll create an opportunity to enjoy being finished. 

Celebrating still doesn’t come naturally to me. I don't enjoy writing fiction, decorating, or choosing background music, either—I’m just wired to focus on the essentials of survival. 

But celebrations are essential. Celebrations give the rest of life meaning.  

I graduated almost a year ago, and I still work on Yale’s campus. And last weekend, after a particularly busy two weeks, I treated myself to Little Salad Shop in the sunshine. 

I’m still learning how to celebrate—but small milestones matter too.

1. As I wrote back in December, “why would I put in all that work just to give myself more work later?”