Last Saturday, I stood outside Canada’s Wonderland watching the fireworks.
As the sky filled with colour, I found myself smiling; not just because of what was happening in front of me, but because of all the other fireworks shows it reminded me of.
I thought about watching them with my children when they were young. I remember watching the one here with them. I remembered Disney World, where the fireworks seemed almost magical through the eyes of a child. Then I thought about standing on the deck of a Disney cruise ship, surrounded by nothing but ocean, watching fireworks light up the night sky in a way I’d never experienced before.
Each memory came flooding back.
Each one felt special.
And yet, none of them felt like they were competing with one another.
For a moment, I wondered which one had been the best.
Then I realized I couldn’t answer the question.
Not because they were equally spectacular, but because they belonged to completely different chapters of my life.
The father watching his children’s faces light up wasn’t the same person as the travellers standing on a cruise ship. The person watching at Wonderland this weekend wasn’t the same person either.
Each experience was shaped by who I was at that moment.
By my age.
My relationships.
My hopes.
My worries.
My understanding of life.
The fireworks may have looked similar, but the person watching them was always changing.
I think we do this far too often with life.
We compare vacations.
Relationships.
Jobs.
Homes.
Even different stages of our lives.
We ask ourselves which one was better, as though every experience should be placed on the same scale.
But maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe some moments aren’t meant to be compared at all. They’re meant to be appreciated for what they were.
The joy of watching my children point excitedly at the sky cannot be recreated today because they’re no longer those little children. The peace I felt standing on a ship in the middle of the ocean couldn’t have existed if I wasn’t raising a young family.
And the gratitude I felt this weekend only exists because of everything I’ve experienced since then.
None of those moments replace one another.
None diminish the others.
Together, they tell the story of a life being lived.
Perhaps that’s one of the quiet lessons of growing older.
We stop asking which chapter was the best.
Instead, we become grateful that we were able to experience them all.
Life isn’t a competition between our memories.
It’s a collection of moments, each beautiful in its own way, each impossible to repeat, and each deserving to be remembered on its own.
As the final fireworks faded into the night, I realized something.
The show wasn’t reminding me of what I’d lost.
It was reminding me of how fortunate I’ve been to have so many skies worth looking up at.