Over the past six weeks, my sister and two of my dearest friends have celebrated landmark birthdays (the kind with a zero at the end). These festivities have left me thinking about birthdays. Why do we celebrate them?
A birthday represents a lap around the sun — 365 Earth days, or 8,760 hours. But let’s be honest — this is a totally arbitrary number. If we were Martians, our year would take 687 days to unfold, which means that instead of celebrating a 40th birthday, you might wait a little bit and make a toast to your 22nd birthday instead. The recent Hollywood film, The Martian, never reveals whether the sexy botanist protagonist, Mark Watney, felt slighted by the fewer birthdays he experienced while stranded on Mars, but my guess is that he would have felt worse off if he’d kept his clock on Earth year time.
The thing about birthdays is that they’re really just a way to mark life passing before your eyes. They’re waypoints in your life story, and they’re an opportunity to take stock and think about what you’ve done and what you still aspire to do.
When I was young, most of my friends were older than me, so I always looked forward to birthdays as a way of catching up. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself befriending and engaging with many people much younger than me, and once in a while I step back and think, holy crap! How did I get so old? But this feeling never lasts.
Birthdays are not just a reminder of passing time but also of lessons learned and wisdom earned. I wouldn’t mind having my 23-year-old body again, but I definitely prefer the deeper person I’ve become over the years. I’m wiser, more forgiving and less angry than I was a few decades ago.
The best thing about birthdays is that they provide an occasion to step back and reflect on your brief existence on this patch of rock in the universe. Some years are harder than others, of course, but even when times are tough, a birthday is a chance to remind yourself, “I got through it!” For many years now I’ve made a ritual of spending my birthday outside, pushing my body to experience the joy of being alive. I do it for myself and for those who didn’t have the privilege of coming this far.
Birthday cake photo by Micolo J via Flickr.
Happy birthday!
dad