It was my birthday a little over a week ago. I've never been the type to get inappropriately excited for my birthday nor the holier-than-thou types that go out of their way to tell you how little of a shit they give for their birthday. To me it's always just been another day.
When I say "always," I am of course referring to life after turning 18. All children 3-17 get super stoked for their birthday, since it means (at best) you'll be getting a lot of presents and free pizza at Chuck E. Cheese or (at worst) your dad won't punch you in the face for 24 hours. Both good things! Alas, the onset of adulthood marks the death crawl towards maturity and responsibility and tax returns and no jumping balloons. Once jumping balloons were out of the picture my interest in future birthdays waned.
"Hey! You've made it an entire year without dying! Please have some cake and take these gift cards to stores you don't really frequent from people you don't really know!" In a nutshell, birthdays.
Now my only real grievance (I wouldn't even call it a grievance. Y'know when your eyebrow kind of itches but not so bad that it necessitates an immediate itch? That is the exact feeling I have towards birthdays.) with the celebration of birthdays is when one is excited for one's own birthday.
Parents happy that their unemployed, do nothing piece of shit son has made it to 30 with no real life goals, let alone life achievements, to merit any form of celebration? Cool. Significant other wants to surprise the newly 28 year old man/woman/passable transsexual in their life with a day filled with romantic cliches (it's like the beginning of act 2, right before shit gets real)? That's cool too. Friends want to have drinks after work with a just turned 40 compatriot (I hope when I turn 40 one of my friends gets me one of those humorous birthday cards that has a tombstone or Death personified on it, so I can take my birthday cake knife and stab the living shit out of him/her for thinking something so fucking trite could be mistaken for being funny)? That is also cool.
But if I, a grown man and owner of dozens of books (if not dozens of dozens), were to get excited for my own birthday? Like, just excited that the anniversary of the day I punched myself out of my mother's womb was today? I'd be an asshole. If you are the biggest advocate of celebrating your birthday you are being a decent human person wrong. Holding one's own birthday with actual reverence is kind of like masturbating to pictures of oneself; it says so much without having to use any words.
Like I said (or alluded to. Whatever. Just keep fucking reading, alright? We're almost done.) earlier, your day of birth has almost nothing to do with you. It is about the people in your life who are grateful to know you, to love you. Your birthday is a celebration of the bonds forged through life, strengthened to endure any hardship or adversity. So before you dive into that double chocolate cake (it's not even gluten free, you fat cow) remember that those candles weren't put up for you. Not really.
