Some Birthday Extravagances

Every year, you wake up to find your phone flooded with notifications! Countless messages, countless missed calls, and countless other things. The very next day, everything returns to normal. Your phone resumes its customary graveyard silence. A few people will send belated wishes, of course. And those wishes will include "sorry" too. Now tell me, does their "regret" make you feel regret as well?

All the phone calls and messages carry the same refrain: "What's today's plan?" It's not as if they genuinely want to know about your plans. It's just something that must be said on that day—a ritual of sorts. As if not asking would bring some calamity upon them!

Then you start thinking about what you could do! What could you do that would allow you to post something on Facebook and trigger a modest flood of likes and comments! People live, after all, to count the likes and comments on their birthday posts! Even strangers, people who neither know nor recognize you, offer birthday wishes in the most loving language and with elaborate posters; anyone would think they've known you across lifetimes!

On birthdays, everyone's Facebook wall becomes overwhelmed by false respect and grade-B affection! And if you happen to be someone like me, you'll spend the day alone, just like any other day. It works out wonderfully if you hide your birthday from your Facebook profile, as I have done! What's the point of wasting time and mental energy on people's fake sincerity? It saves them from this additional burden too.

You'll keep asking yourself, what's the point of all this? This business where everyone remembers me for this one day, and for the remaining three hundred and sixty-four days never bothers to check on me—is this what we call a birthday? Eventually you'll discover that you've started replying to people's wishes! Even those you never speak with will write that they miss you; and you'll write the same in return. This isn't love or attachment—it's an exchange, a politeness.

It's not that they remember your birthday. They learned the date from Facebook or some other reminder. Yet you reply to them: "Thank you for remembering my birthday!" or something similar. Isn't this what we call hypocrisy? Humans cannot survive without being hypocritical—it's been that way for ages.

The older you get, the more you'll understand that birthdays aren't about gifts, parties, friends, and such things. The meaning of that day is that new burdens keep piling onto your shoulders each year, you must become more mature, your responsibilities keep multiplying. Each birthday arrives and reminds you that much remains to be done, that life still needs organizing. All the things you could have accomplished but didn't—your friends have accomplished them, so you must prepare to achieve something worthwhile before the next birthday arrives.

On this day, various thoughts enter your mind. The birthday passes amid various reflections. Meanwhile, your close friends and some dear ones wait for this day, anticipating it for days beforehand. They cut cake with you, have fun with you, upload photos on Facebook. This does involve a bit of intellectual exercise too—searching for photo captions!

Watching them, you might wonder: what's there to celebrate so much? There's still good work to be done in life. Life seems increasingly difficult to you day by day.

They say, thank God you got to live one more year!
You think: by living this extra year, aside from adding age and suffering, what have I managed to do that warrants thanking God?

It no longer occurs to you that being alive itself is a wonderful bonus! It no longer occurs to you that as long as you're alive, no opportunity is truly lost!

You really are growing up!