Birthday Musings

So it's that time of the year again. My Birthday.

A Birthday is a strange day for a person once they pass that certain age, stepping across the threshold into adulthood, aging, and slow but inevitable decrepitude. You may laugh - what does a child like me know of decrepitude?? Well, this year I turn 23. According to the mathematical laws of rounding off, I am now on the near side of 25, and on the far side of 20. I calculated that according to expected future lifespan averages, at least a quarter of my life has already passed, and as the last quarter of my life is both uncertain and may be of a lower quality of living, that leaves me only two good quarters left to go. Thus I am a third of the way into my life already, which is significant.

For those of us over the threshold, our birthday is a day we love to hate, yet are required to love.

On the day of my Birthday I traditionally spend a significant amount of time thinking (it falls most inconveniently in the middle of uni and school exam time, so mostly nobody's free to celebrate it with me). I think both backwards and forwards, I consider my progression through life to date, and I consider the future.

Although I feel satisfied with what I have achieved so far, there is still so much left undone. Each year the future seems to shrink a little and time speeds up. I think this is because over time our memory lessens proportionately to the number of years we've been alive; if you've only lived five years, you'll have lots and lots of memories from those five years so they'll seem like a long time. However, if you've lived 25 years, you only have limited capacity with what you can remember, so you retain much less memories from each year, creating the illusion that time has sped up when you think back as you jump from memory to memory spread further apart.

At any rate, one of the annoying things about birthdays is that all day everybody around you is expected to cater to your every whim and go out of their way to make you happy. Questions such as "what would you like to do now?", "who would you like to see?" "where would you like to go?" "what special meal would you like to eat for lunch, and for dinner?", "what type of cake do you want?", and "what would make you happy right now?" are an indecisive person's nightmare. There's this sense of mutual anxiety in the air - your loved ones wanting to make sure you are enjoying yourself, and you wanting to make things as easy on your loved ones as possible.

Birthdays would also be a lot easier if there weren't so many rules you had to keep in mind and follow religiously.

Rule number 1: you're not allowed to be alone on your birthday. This means no going places by yourself, and no spending too much time alone in your room. And definitely no going to watch a movie by yourself, because that's just sad (the idea really appealed to me first thing this morning, but I soon gave it up as a lost cause).

Rule number 2: You must be happy, consistently happy, all day. Woe betide you allow yourself to sink into a melancholic or depressive state on your birthday. This is a big social no no.

Rule number 3: You must have the correct emotional reaction to the present unwrapping procedure; an emotional pattern of surprise, joy, and gratitude upon opening each present. You must also remember to maintain a constant big smile, or people will become worried and ask you what's wrong. If this makes your jaws hurt, perhaps polishing up on your smiling, laughter, and profuse thank you's the day before in the mirror wouldn't go amiss.

And so forth.

All this being said, it's nice to spend a day feeling loved and wanted. Having special attention from loved ones gives a warm fuzzy feeling inside, and although it's easy to complain about the "happy birthday" spam on facebook, it's nice to see people care enough to take a minute out of their day to convey their well wishes to you.

I had a lovely birthday. :)