Birthday

It seems a bit strange, in retrospect, how we have one day to celebrate the passing of a year; as if that day could encompass all of the things you have done in those 12 months; as though you are really any older than you would be with the passing of any other day, any wiser from the advance of one day before than whatever comes within 24 hours, and how the perspective of someone you’ve introduced yourself to will change if you do it just a day later. 

What we make it about — the gifts, the celebration, the sort of joy — becomes less and less memorable (is that the right word?), becomes less and less of something that seems worth commemoration, when you have lived thousands of days that could have been just the same. And to mark time as something linear is its own strange concept in itself. I feel as though the older I am, the more it’s the moments that stick, the memories, that really mark its passage. Perhaps that is why we are so insistent on making our birthdays special — to make the way the mind says years pass consistent with the way the world does. Not to say that it’s a bad thing; often it’s the only way to stay sane.

But I think for me, at the root of it, a lot of its purpose is to remind me of all I have and where I am, to remind me of time's journey – that no matter how days drag, time does keep moving on, and to stay stuck in the past will only make you lose time in the present and the future, which will come sooner than you think. 

I’m not sure. 

I have so much to learn ...

… Happy birthday to me, I guess.