Birthday week has come and gone; yes I claim a birthday week. Why you ask? Well because I figure that after an entire month laden with study calumniating with exams form the back door of hell itself, I deserved a week off from life in general. Luckily, my birthday falls right about the start of this lazy week I call it so I could so easily protract it for an entire week and have no guilt about it whatsoever; thus birthday week!
So what is it about growing older that makes us so excited? The need to hire temporary help to respond to messages on all sorts of social and electronic media aimed at yours truly is one I think. On this one day is when all and sundry will be nice to you; handshakes, hugs, kisses and the likes even from total strangers in a sort of emotional domino effect kind of concept.
As this day wears on, and in between my nonchalance to the system of classes I should be attending, I steal short moments here and there to try and contemplate all that I have been through in the past few years of my life and see if I have become any wiser since when I last did this.
Like a proverbial mirror on the wall, I stare into space to objectively assess my life in the past years in anticipation of massive revelations about the point of life and its direction in my particular case. For one the face has not changed much; the beard I shaved just last week is back with a vengeance, facial hair seems to grow much faster now (must be the age!); the eyes are a bit more sunken and tired (must be the midnight oil sessions taking a toll); the face has lost its initial youthfulness and naivety and aptly replaced with seasoned experience on issues life et al; the hairline is showing signs of receding which leaves me a few worries here and there.
They say a face can tell an entire story, so details of other changes are rendered pretty irrelevant in general.
Fast forward to the latter parts of the evening and a birthday party is in full swing. As I sit in a corner, head bobbing to the music or inadvertently due to the extra special drinks imbibed with over zealous individuals hell-bent on getting me on the drunken express in record time (as they believe a birthday is best spent drunken and disorderly!) - I know not - I recall when I was a member of the aimlessly-hopping-about-drunken-youth bunch in a night club with an inexplicable amount of energy; days gone by when I lived for the party; days gone by when FILO applied (for all who did some sort of management studies you will understand the first-in-last-out principle); days gone by when the success of a night was measured by how much one could imbibe in an evening or how many non-rejections from the fairer sex one would have notched up on the counter.
A loose chuckle escapes me as I watch the ensuing events of the evening and think back to why we actually celebrate getting older in life. Then it hits me; its not about celebrating ageing, it is celebrating getting through one more year of changes in one's life; one more year of growth (both physical but mainly mental); one more year of victories and losses and lessons learnt. It is a celebration of all that one has accomplished in a year and the hope and longing for another year of similar if not greater achievements. It is a celebration of life and an extension on one's lease of life.
So ladies and gentlemen, give thanks for the life you have and celebrate life every single chance you get!
As was said by Steve Jobs:
'Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.'
Salutations to you February-borns; we rock!
No comments:
Post a Comment