Age: 18 Day 1/365
People like to think something about a person is different the day their birthday comes around. This does not hold true for myself. I do not, in fact, understand why people think something changes. Under normal circumstances you’re the same person that you were yesterday. Age is an arbitrary number that we use to define how long we have been on this earth. You can tell someone the exact same information in multiple ways. Today I am eighteen years old. Today I am 938.57142857 weeks old. Today I am 6,570 days old. It’s just a number.
Exactly 8 days previous to this one my friend had his (arbitrary number here) birthday. He told me that if felt “weird to be (arbitrary number).” I did not sympathize/empathize with the sentiment. I think I might have even told him that nothing changes on a birthday. I can’t remember, it was a week ago.
Well, my birthday started getting close and people started getting excited. What for? Everyone would ask me, “Hey! What do you want for your birthday?” I would answer, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” Because I don’t care about my birthday. At some point during the week I mentioned the date and from across the room someone yelled out “Two days till (my name)’s birthday!” The people around me were far more excited for my birthday than I was. Why is that?
So I thought about it. I thought about why people celebrate birthdays? Why do I celebrate my own birthday? I celebrate my birthday because it is a societal and a cultural norm, I want to eat cake, and I like being just a little bit selfish with good reason. So I expand that thought a little bit. Everyone wants to be a little bit selfish with good reason. Expand the thought even more. It’s nice to give someone a reason to be selfish and get cake while you’re at it. Then I jump to a new thought. Man, it sure is great I’ve managed to survive an arbitrary unit of measurement. Now it makes sense. Celebrating the fact that we’re still alive. Then now, that isn’t selfish. That’s grateful. So then shouldn’t birthdays be about gratitude towards the life we have been given and those that have helped us all through out the journey?
So now I understand why we celebrate birthdays. Nothing may change over a day but plenty changes over a year. Suddenly being a legal adult means more responsibility and a means of using all of those changes I’ve amassed since the day I was born 938.57142857 weeks ago. It sure is great to be alive.
Post Script: I do hope I did that math correctly.
tiring pages, 