Reasons for Celebrating Birthdays
Why do we observe celebrating our birthdays? What is it that we are toasting? Is it because against all the odds we managed to survive another year? Are we marking the progress we have made, our cumulative achievements and possessions? Is that symbolizes a new hope for us to live our life for the year to come?
None would matter maybe..
If we are remembering the past year, would we still drink to it if we know we are going to die soon? Not likely. But why? How is the future relevant (our own eventful death) when one is celebrating the past? The past is immutable. No future event can corrupt the fact that we got it through for another year. Then why not celebrate this fact?
Because what we think is not the past. It is about our future, not about the past. We are observing having arrived so far because such successful resilience allows us to move forward. We proclaim our potential to enjoy all what life has to offer. Birthdays are expressions of exuberant, blind faith in our own suspended mortality.
But if these all are true, surely as we grow older we have less and less cause to celebrate. What reason do octogenarians have to drink to another year if that gift is not easily guaranteed? Life provides diminishing returns: the longer you are invested, the less likely you are to reap the dividenda of survival, life insurance for example. Indeed, based on actuary tables, it becomes increasingly less rational to celeberate as we grow older.
Thus, we are driven into thinking self-delusionally defying death are what birthday meant. Preserving the illusion of immortality are what birthdays mean. Birthdays are forms of acting out our magical thinking. By celebrating our existence, we give ourselves protective charms against the nonsense and arbitrariness of a impersonal, cruel, cold, and and most often a world full of hostility.
And it works more often than not. Have a no prescription - Happy birthday!
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