My Birthday
Why do we celebrate a person's birthday? Some stray thoughts on my birthday.
27 October 2024. 30 minutes to midnight.
It is 11:30 at night. Another half an hour and the next day would arrive, my birthday. I am now squarely in the seventh decade of my life. I have seen more of life than I would see in the coming years. I have spent more time on this earth than I would in future.
Why do we celebrate a person's birthday? I do not know. We are a society obsessed with youthfulness but celebrate when one becomes older on birthdays!
I can understand the parents celebrating the birthdays of their offspring. When the child is born, it faces a lot of uncertainties on the health and safety front. It was true for most children born to parents, even a century ago. Even now, children dying during birth or within twenty days of birth is not a small number. According to WHO statistics, globally, 2.3 million children passed away in the first twenty days of birth in the year 2022. "There are approximately 6500 newborn deaths every day, amounting to 47% of all child deaths under the age of 5 years." In a world so much skewed towards death for a newborn, it is a time of celebration for the parents once the child goes past these vulnerable days. As the child grows every year, the parents celebrate the birthdays to mark the milestones.
For a middle-aged man past his prime, celebrating birthdays is confusing. Why do the old celebrate their birthdays? The old are not celebrating their birthdays. It is their loved ones, their family, and their friends who celebrate. So, my family is celebrating my birthday. They are celebrating that I am still around, healthy, and hearty. At this age, it is a cause for celebration. And I gladly participate.
My daughters instructed me to stay awake until midnight. I am staying awake, waiting for the clock to turn midnight, and while I do, I am writing this, putting some stray thoughts on paper. Well, not literally, on paper, as I am writing it on my laptop.
28 October 2024. 30 minutes past midnight.
It is now past midnight, and the celebration is over. I cut the cake and ate a portion of it, too. It is a dark chocolate cake, my favourite. I feel a warm glow spread through me. One waits for this feeling, even if once or twice a year when people around us take time out to show that they love us. I wish we express and shower our love and affection to those whom we care for more often. They make us feel so special. In the daily struggle of our existence, these small gestures, however small, give meaning to our lives. As a sentence without punctuation becomes meaningless, so does life punctuated without these small events. These small events make life bearable and worth living.
I know that when I wake up in the morning, my social media inbox will be full of good wishes from people far and near. It is one of the only positive sides of social media. It is now easier to reach out to loved ones with just a few clicks of a button when one chooses.
I am thankful to all who remember me today and take time out to greet me. It makes me feel special.
28 October 2024. Late morning.
Do I feel my age?
I'm not sure. I still feel like the confused, callow person I was in my youth, and I'm still not sure what I want in life. I am unsure what shapes our life, fate/chance or actions. Sometimes, the odds in life overwhelm me. The balance sheet of life does not seem to match.
But then, who cares? Why should I care? Why should life follow a set trajectory? Life has its flaws, yet it flows. With no set pattern, it is full of surprises, mostly pleasant but sometimes not so gratifying. One must learn to take it in one's stride. I am still learning.
I remember the dialogue given by the character played by Nasiruddin Shah in the movie A Wednesday, "We are resilient not by choice, but by compulsion." So am I. I am resilient and remember the priceless words spoken by poet Frost before I end this ranting.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   But I have promises to keep,   And miles to go before I sleep,   And miles to go before I sleep.
I also shared my thoughts on my birthday on previous occasions. Here are the links if you want to read them.
I really loved reading your thoughts on 'why we celebrate birthdays'. Recently, I started a conscious practice of giving a 'gift' on his/her birthday by celebrating the strength, achievement and 'humanised aspect of what makes that person that person'.
It has really added a new perspective of birthday's in my mind.