There’s a thing I’ve been doing on my birthday, off and on, since I’ve been about 16.
Now, this thing I do, off and on but mostly on since I was 16, is not anything special but it is very personal. I don’t recall the details of every birthday I’ve done this. I do recall certain special occasions. These usually correspond with the typical age milestones we all agree on: 16. 18. 21. 30. 45. 50. In fact, milestones are particularly well suited for this exercise.
Typically I wait until the end of my birthday, after whatever festivities, if any, have concluded. It doesn’t take very long but it does necessitate a certain amount of privacy. I don’t make a big deal out of my birthday – I don’t have a party, I do my best not to fish for a happy birthday wish, I’m not concerned with gifts, and I don’t feel the pull to be in a crowd, either at a bar or a music venue. Usually, my wife and I will go and have a nice meal somewhere. I’ll be home before it is dark out (not because I eat at the time the grey hairs do but because it’s still not dark here in the Pacific northwest by 9pm at the end of May), perhaps I’ll indulge in a bit of cannabis before I watch a movie, listen to some music, or maybe just read. That’s usually how my birthday goes. That, and this thing I do.
The first thing I do after I’ve found a quiet spot to myself is try and find some stars to look at. A body of water is also good, if the sky is obscured. Any beautiful spot of nature will do. Still, one takes what one can, and I do recall doing this exercise in some less than beautiful surroundings. But no matter where I may be, I tell myself no matter what has happened during this last year and no matter what is likely to happen during the next, you are damned lucky to be standing here able to have that thought; be glad you are alive, here, now, with possession of your faculties and your sense of wonder and gratitude still intact.
Then I review the year that has just gone past, the good, the bad, and the merely mediocre. I spend some time thinking about people who are no longer in my life, people I will always love, even though time and circumstance has formed us into people who can no longer be together, or the forks in our individual paths simply lead elsewhere. This list has grown significantly as I’ve aged. I imagine it will grow longer still, hopefully at a glacial pace. I appreciate those who still are in my life and I resolve to keep them there, as best I can.
When I was younger, the thing I do next was much less grounded. I cast an eye towards what might most be in store for my future self. I remember being 16 and knowing that in the near term, things were pretty predictable: get through high school, get out of this house, see the world. But I didn’t just think about the next couple years, I tried to envision what my life would be like at 20, 30, 50. Needless to say, the wild eyed musings of a 16 year old in 1982 don’t come close to the reality of turning 51 years old in the beginning of the 21st century. No matter what the future holds, I know who I am in a way that is simply impossible for an adolescent.
But I remember that young man’s mind with some frightening detail. I know what I’ve lost, traded, and gained over those intervening thirty five years. When I was thirteen I was reading Plato’s Apology and learning about Socrates. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” “Know yourself.” Socrates said. Question your underlying assumptions. You might think this a difficult exercise for a teenager but it really isn’t. Many in our culture would be well served by an introduction to Socrates just prior to puberty. He innately appeals to the teenage mind. If Socrates were alive today, he’d be a 13 year old girl with the catch phrase “You don’t know what you think you know, you know?” Examining your life at 16 doesn’t take that long, because when you’re that young there isn’t that much for you to examine, you haven’t had the time to develop depth, or at least not in the way 50 years behind you affords.
My motto back then was “variety is the spice of life.” I craved experiences and sensations that an overly authoritarian household attempted to deny me at every turn. Yet by god I was going to have them and have them I did. I not only had my fun I had your’s as well. And his. And hers. There were occasions where those good times easily could have led to my demise or a life nowhere near as good as the one I enjoy. Fortune favors the foolish and the phantasmagorically fucked up. I wanted to live every life but my own. It’s the reason why I still love fiction. There are so many ways to be human and I want to experience as many of those ways as I can.
I clearly recall trying to guess what it would feel like being 50. When I turned 50 last year, I tried to imagine what it would feel like being 100. I hope I’m as wrong at 100 as I was at 16. Because being older is better than what that 16 year old could imagine. All those experiences I yearned for, and more, are now part of a vast pool of knowing. Knowing not just in the sense of facts and processes neatly cataloged and stored but knowing in a visceral way. What it feels like to win. To lose. To not being able to tell the difference. To affirm your allegiance towards something that will always be grander than you as an individual, maybe even something noble. To know that vast pool will only ever be but a rapidly drying puddle compared to the ocean of what there is to know and be. It’s not enough to merely know yourself. In the end we are responsible to that self; doesn’t it makes sense then to develop into the best version possible?
This year will be a little different. I’m essentially doing here what I would have done in the privacy of my new home. Snapping the laundry of my mind out in the warm breeze of exposition. Letting some sunlight in and beating the carpets. When I was sixteen I craved the new. At fifty one I still do. It’s a good thing life moves so fast, I never have to worry about being jaded and I am old enough now to not be tempted by that I have already done.
I hope all the wonders we seem to be teetering on the cusp of come to pass. I would like to live in a world where turning 50 means you’ve finally exited childhood and are ready for the life of an adult. I often think it’s taken me that long to at last have a firm grasp of what being an adult means. Whenever I feel the urge to excoriate myself for taking so long I’m reminded we all exist somewhere on that spectrum and for everyone I might feel inferior to in that regard, the examples of those below me are legion. I’d be more inclined to patience if the times weren’t so otherwise demanding.
I am still learning. I want to be able to say the same when I’m 100.
Despite overwhelming evidence that urges otherwise and all the times I play the contrarian, I remain optimistic. Life is fantastically rich and good. Life is almost unbearably tragic and sad. I try in my own way to maximize the former and minimize the latter. To do otherwise leads to despair or a callous heart. I leave regret aside as much as I am able – it’s too easy to slip into self pity.
And besides, I have decades of memories to remind myself just how precious it is to be alive. I aim myself towards a future where the really good stuff has yet to happen and the worst is yet to come.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
