Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we are toasting? Is it for we survive another year of hardships and odds? 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 of the above, it would seem.
If we are remembering the past year, would we still drink to it if we were to receive some bad news about our health and imminent demise? Not likely, but why? What is the relevance of information about the future (our own upcoming death) when one is celebrating the past? The past is immutable. Never a future event can corrupt the fact that we have made it through another 12 months of struggle. Then why not celebrate this fact?
Because what we think is not the past. Our birthdays are about the future, not of the past. We are celebrating having gone so far because such outlook in life allows us to continue forward. We proclaim our potential to further enjoy the gifts of life. Birthdays are constructions of unbridled, 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 one more 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. So, based on actuary tables, it becomes increasingly less rational to celebrate one’s future the older one gets.
Thus, we are driven into the conclusion self-delusionally defying death are what birthday meant. Birthdays are about preserving the illusion of immortality. 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 cruel, impersonal, and and most of the time a world of hostility.
And, more often than not, it works. Have a no prescription - Happy birthday!
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