Birthday Wish
An Essay by Stephen Geez
www.StephenGeez.com
Art by Dizzy
Have you ever made a birthday wish?
It’s a tradition that starts very young. Children learn that each birthday is rewarding, a fine reason to celebrate, an occasion for gifts, the official opportunity to make a formal wish for even greater gain in the year to come. Eagerly anticipated, this event is recognized and acknowledged by others, an elevation of status for just that day. To a child, not much beats being “the birthday girl” or “the birthday boy.”
The gift element of this rite marks milestones and conveys new “old enough for” status: the first two-wheeler, a four-legged pet, teen-rated video games, grown-up cosmetics. Aside from the largesse, we also embrace this confirmation of life’s milestones: reaching double-digits, becoming a teen, qualifying to join that league, passing minimum driving age, assuming the responsibilities of eighteen, flashing an ID that boasts twenty-one.
Once we have marked more than a few birthdays in our done-that columns, we inevitably notice that they seem to come at us faster.This illusion of time is explained as the comparison of fraction against the whole: to youngsters, each year represents a significant portion of all known lifetime; while to the geezer demographic, years pass as ever-shrinking increments of a marathon that now seems shorter looking back than it did to the child looking forward.
But I think this illusion also results from an increasing propensity to view time as overlapping layers. Children think of life as linear, a series of moments coming one after another, their anticipation focused solely on the what’s-next: next holiday, next school-start, next school-out, next vacation . . .
Next birthday.
Maturity brings a view toward long-term multi-tiered planning, a fitting together of both complementing and competing ambitions, a balance between wants and needs—learning versus earning, seeing the world now versus starting a family and traveling later, a burst of full-time service to others versus occasional charity while advancing the self.
So there you are, assembling your own abstract jigsaw vision of life, when along comes another birthday to point out how much remains undone. The day has become a new kind of marker, a reminder to take stock, the tick of a timer powered by batteries that won’t last forever. By then, most of us have lost at least one person we loved, and the abstract of ephemeral existence has become poignantly real. Sure, many expect their time to extend beyond death, and a few believe it springs from past lives before birth, but most agree that the very lifetime we cherish now on this world is finite. We will celebrate only so many birthdays, some of us more than others, none as many as we might want.
So the whole idea of a birthday wish begins to fade, relegated to the realm of childish rituals, or at least treated as an amusing diversion without the investment of honest expectation. Still, I’ve kept it up, and I’ve kept it simple. A long time ago I quit looking for “things” and started marking every birthday simply as confirmation I have lived, an occasion to hope I am lucky enough to celebrate one more next year.
So far I have a perfect record of getting my wish!
And someday that wish will have no chance of coming true.
Now I finally understand why so many eventually reject the very idea of even acknowledging their own birthdays. As those milestones come faster and faster, it’s easy to forget appreciating another year, to start dreading them as ticks toward an inevitable end. Who can enjoy a leisurely stroll knowing it’s to the guillotine?
There will be wrenchingly bad years, too, and who wants to “take stock” when to survive intact we’ve had to practice looking away from what hurts most? Maybe it’s the death of a loved one, disintegration of family, setbacks to career, or even a diagnosis that promises the coming year will prove rougher, that maybe there won’t be enough days left to reach another birthday.
We all want to bend time. Children age so rapidly that we wish to slow them down, to preserve those precious stages of innocence and grace, even as the youngsters are trying to speed their own growing up. Angry workers race toward retirement like frustrated prisoners hash-marking cell walls, willing to trade large slices of tangy life for a dollop of post-retirement sweet-cream before the end. But others somehow manage a modicum of contentment, if not outright moments of joy, despite the challenges that too often ironically mar the very achievement of old age.
Still, I don’t understand how people can pretend birthdays don’t even exist. Even to those busy crossing off time-left rather than adding to the list of days-lived, the simple fact is that a birthday comes every year, no matter how the birthday boy or girl feels about it.
So who cares?
The answer to that question, I believe, transcends time. It plants the seed of a notion that can blossom into the most exquisite of attainable birthday wishes.
Who cares, indeed.
Pretend you don’t care about your birthday, if you must, but I’ll bet somebody else does.
Really.
If your next birthday is marked by having no one who wants to wish you the best, nobody to send you a card or stop by for a visit, not a soul to throw you an embarrassing party and sing you those copyrighted words, would you rather live like that for a hundred more years than to celebrate your final birthday with people who’ll invest the capital from their own wish-bank in a confirming gesture of goodwill?
I do hope you’ve been enjoying the most remarkable of years, and it breaks my heart to fear that maybe this one might have been especially hard, but however it measures up when you can’t help but take stock, remember this one simple truth:
We live in a beautiful world, and the only reason any of us feels the pain is because we have learned to embrace the ecstasy.
We want every year to feel good and right, but if you’re truly pressed to find anything wonderful about your next birthday, just look closer and I promise you’ll find it in the people who care.
It might manifest as predictably as that same old card in the mail, a phone call at the customary time, or a choreographed surprise so true to its custom that all real surprise leaked out years ago.
Or it might come when you least expect it, from someone you never suspected cares.
So don’t fight the pain; don’t forget the joy. And don’t pretend it’s not your birthday, because it is, and that’s a beautiful thing.
Somebody loves you, babe.
And it just might be me.
Now that’s a wish come true!
So here’s a Happy Birthday to you.
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© The Fresh Ink Group, LLC, 2007
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