Birthday's are very Special

It's my friend's birthday today.

As happens every year, I start to get the birthday goosebumps as summer arrives, the big number (and every year it seems a bigger number even though it only goes up by an increment of one!) looms on the horizon and I face a sort of existential crisis. It strikes me that there is a vital error somewhere; my legal age bears no resemblance to how old I actually feel. Not only that, but time seems to have escaped me. Where did all those years go?

But on the day itself, I feel nothing when am alone and pure joy when I am with my special people. How fickle we human beings are! We dread/enjoy something and then enjoy/dread it when it comes. The truth is I dont resent getting older but I love celebrating with friends and family. I was on a call till late at night with a friend who shares her birthday today. I generally feel ecstatic when i wake up on my birthday to hear the first text messages buzz on my phone, friends calling up and singing an extremely raucous versions of happy birthday — and there is bound to be more to come. Each is more out of tune than the previous one making me guffaw with laughter. I know the messages will come; yet I am still touched by everyone that remembers.

It’s not just my own birthday. I love other peoples’ birthdays too. What I appreciate is the chance to celebrate that someone is among us. It is the one day of the year when you get to say to someone I am really glad that you were born, I am really glad you are alive and well, I hope you live a long and happy life. It’s corny I know but we don’t let the people we care about know often enough just how important they are to us. Of course, it is something we should be doing on a daily basis and I agree with those who say why celebrate just on that one day, every day should be a celebration of life, but I still think birthdays are special, because they help focus attention on that one person for that one day.

The only problem is the number on the cake. As a child you just want that number to get bigger and bigger. You are not seven but seven and a half! Whereas as adults being called just one year older is a grievous insult. It’s all part of the cult of youth, an over-rated cult since those supposed best days of our life were not so great really (would you really like to be a teenager again?) and life does get better with age. But none of us want to look older. Wrinkles and receding hairlines can be distinguished but who wants to be distinguished when you can be gorgeous? And we all hanker after that vitality of youth. More than anything getting older makes us more aware of our own mortality, something that we’d rather not think about.

In particular it’s those landmark birthdays that are tough on morale so I was very amused to learn on Wikipedia the idea of celebrating monthly birthdays. Essentially you forget the month and just focus on the day, in my friend's case the number 26 since she was born on 26th August. This gives the chance of celebrating round numbers like 300 months (25 in years) but also more interesting numbers like 333 (27.75 in years) or 3-2-1 also called the blast off birthday... You get the celebration but with less of the pressure of one year older! I think it’s a fabulous idea. I am seriously thinking of having a big party on Sept. 27th this year to celebrate my next interesting number!

Birthdays may seem a little frivolous on the surface. In my experience it is something essentially for children.My father didn’t care for them and still has confusion remembering his own birthday. The first time he was faced with the question at work in New delhi, he chose the day’s date. The office people wished him a happy birthday!

There is often some distaste too for what is seen as more superstition than something worthy of celebration, but I treat birthday superstitions in the same way as I treat all superstition: I look for the grain of logic from which it came. So, for instance, I will not celebrate my birthday ahead of time. The superstition is that it causes bad luck. The logic is that you cannot celebrate something that has not happened yet. To put it in religious terms, celebrating your birthday a few days early means you are assuming you will reach that milestone whereas God may choose to take you at any time of His choosing. The superstition reminds you not to take life for granted, just as celebrating a birthday is about giving thanks for life.

There is something so optimistic about it, reminding you of just how much people think about you and care about what happens to you. Birthdays are important, they are not, as one morbid friend put it, about “one year gone, one year less to go” but about taking stock of where we’re at and being thankful for the gift of life. There are plenty of difficult moments in life, so when your birthday comes along, remember what it felt like to wake up on your birthday as a child and hold on to that joy. And, oh, don’t forget the presents!

Happy Birthday Anika Verma.. God Bless you :)