Introduction: What We Can Learn From St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick's Day falls on March 17th every year. It is a national holiday in Ireland and a beloved celebration in many countries, including Canada.
I first wrote this piece 16 years ago, after catching part of the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Toronto on my way home from church. Something about watching people come together in the cold, dancing and laughing and waving green flags, made me want to find the lesson in it. That instinct has not changed.
Who Was St. Patrick?
St. Patrick was a Romano-British Christian missionary, believed to have lived from roughly AD 387 to 493. At 16, he was captured by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland as a slave. After six years, he escaped and returned home to his family.
That alone is a remarkable story. But he did not stay home.
After entering the church and becoming an ordained bishop, St. Patrick returned to Ireland, the very place where he had been enslaved. He described being called back through a vision, hearing the voices of the Irish people asking him to walk among them. By the eighth century, he was revered as the patron saint of Ireland.
That is not a story about religion alone. It is a story about purpose, courage, and extraordinary forgiveness.
What We Can Learn From St. Patrick’s Day: Three Lessons Worth Carrying
First, consider what forgiveness actually costs, and what it frees. St. Patrick had every reason to turn away from Ireland. He chose not to. And that choice did not diminish him. It defined him. Forgiveness is often framed as something you do for the other person, but it is just as much about what you become when you stop carrying the weight. Who in your life are you avoiding or holding at arm's length when returning might change everything, including you?
Second, think about the power of showing up. The parade in Toronto drew people from all walks of life, in the cold, choosing community over comfort. When did you last make that choice? Not because it was convenient, but because belonging matters. For those of us who lean introverted, this is not always easy. Showing up can feel like it costs something. But staying away costs more, quietly, over time. Connection does not happen in theory. It happens when you say yes and go.
Third, notice what play does for people. At the parade, there was Irish dancing, green everything, and genuine joy on strangers' faces. Professional development does not always look like a course or a book. Sometimes it looks like letting yourself be present and a little ridiculous, and remembering that ease and levity are skills too. The ability to step outside your routine and enjoy something for no productive reason is worth protecting.
What We Can Learn from St. Patrick’s Day: We Do Not Celebrate Enough
Here is something I have noticed about myself, and I suspect it applies to many of you as well. Most of us do not celebrate nearly enough. We wait for occasions someone else has named, a holiday, a milestone, a birthday, rather than marking the smaller things that actually shape our days.
Finishing a hard project deserves acknowledgment. Getting through a difficult season deserves acknowledgment. Showing up consistently, even when you did not feel like it, deserves acknowledgment.
St. Patrick's Day is technically someone else's story. But it is also an invitation to ask when you last genuinely celebrated something in your own life, and who you celebrated it with. Building relationships takes intention. It means attending the events, accepting the invitations, and staying connected even when solitude feels easier. The investment is slow and invisible until suddenly it is not.
What This Means for You
Any experience, including a parade you walk past on a Saturday morning, has the potential to teach you something if you are paying attention. That was true 16 years ago and it is still true now.
The world has grown considerably more complicated since 2010. But the questions St. Patrick's story raises have not changed. What would you do in his position? What are you returning to, or refusing to return to, that deserves a second look? And what small thing happened recently that you let pass without pausing to mark it?
Worth sitting with on March 17th. Green hat optional.
Avil Beckford is the founder of The Invisible Mentor and creator of the Applied Knowledge Is Power workshop. She helps executives turn reading into a structured thinking process, so what they learn shows up in their decisions, not just on their bookshelves.
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First published in March 2010
