Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we are proud of? 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 a birthday the expression of 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 know we are going to die soon? Not likely. But why? What is the relevance of information about the future (our own eventful death) when it is the past that we are celebrating? The past is immutable. No future event can corrupt the fact that we have made it through another 12 months of struggle. Then why not celebrate this fact?
Because it is not the past that is foremost on our minds. It is about our future, not of the past. We are celebrating having gone so far because such successful resilience allows us to move 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, certainly we have less and less to celebrate as we grow older. What reason do octogenarians have to drink to another year if that gift is far from 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 actuarial science, it becomes increasingly less rational to celebrate one’s future the older one gets.
Thus, we are forced into thinking self-delusionally defying death are what birthday meant. Preserving the illusion of immortality are what birthdays mean. Birthdays are forms of acting out our imaginative thinking. By celebrating that we exist, we bestow on ourselves protective charms against the nonsense and whimsical nature of a impersonal, cruel, cold, and and most often a world full of hostility.
And it works most of the time. Have a no prescription - Happy birthday!
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