The Tedium of Celebration

Please, let no one invite me to birthdays. The very mention of birthday or anniversary celebrations fills me with dread, makes my hands tremble, and for economic reasons my feet drag backward—saying "I won't go." Perhaps because I am utterly ordinary, I don't want to lose myself in the even more ordinary conventionalities of other ordinary people's birthdays or wedding days.

It's precisely because I'm ordinary that I've come to know and recognize this ordinariness. Like a still, stagnant pond lying quietly, my life has grown accustomed to the occasional pebble, the leap of a frog, or at most the ripples stirred by raindrops—I don't want to disturb this existence with the tedium of celebrating designated days.

So at the birth or wedding anniversaries of the overly familiar, a question arises—"Oh, what great work was accomplished in this birth or marriage that requires such fanfare!" The opposing side, ready for debate, will say, "We want to make this day precious with our loved ones. We celebrate for our loved ones too because we love them. We may not be renowned in society's eyes, but we exist in our own." Yes, I agree with the latter part. Let these festivities remain confined within ourselves—at least we can escape facing unpleasant truths in the crowd of loved ones. Those truths are too harsh, utterly pitiful.

Somehow, the mob mentality possesses the power to drag people along frantically. Like in a tug-of-war game where both sides pull with their lives at stake to save their team's honor, and eventually the weaker side tumbles onto the stronger ones—I find myself aligned not with them, but with those who stand outside the circle, offering encouragement.

These people select the burly, strong ones, hand them the rope, then wave handkerchiefs and pour all their physical strength into their voices, trying to transmit that power to the hands of the mighty; though often the effort itself becomes more prominent, still they try. When their side wins, they wave handkerchief banners and stamp about triumphantly, applaud ear-splittingly at prize time, with an attitude of..."That prize is ours too."

But if they lose, they don't even look back, completely forgetting the history of bringing players into the game. The mob mentality intoxicates with such hysteria, making helpless, weak people drunk. Like a child lost in a crowd of many people, they then search for familiar faces, not announcing through loudspeakers like wise, mature souls, "I am here."

In the mob mentality of birth or wedding days, we become just like that—like the helpless child. Where I exist in the festivities, I myself don't know, merely becoming like ankle bells on another's feet, chiming to their rhythm. I don't know how to ring on my own, nor do I have the capacity. Perhaps I don't even understand what rhythm my chimes follow with their steps. Not being rhythmic, I can't sense where the beat needs to be held.

When someone turns eighteen or celebrates their eighteenth wedding anniversary, such news of milestones makes my thoughts go awry—nothing happened in your lives except adding a few years. So on my own birthday, candle flames don't flicker on the special birthday food. Because I no longer need to blow them out—the candle-bearing years keep trembling and extinguishing themselves. They have nothing to offer to the festival of light. And one who has no capacity to give, why should they receive?

So this day belongs to me alone, to myself. Standing face to face with existence, I judge myself in tested light—having crossed another year, how much more illuminated have I become?