Birthdays

 
By Stanley Collymore

Birthdays, if accurately stated, are the distinctive
landmarks that tell us how far along life’s
personal journey every one of us has
individually travelled. However,
what they most definitely don’t do is to accurately
indicate how long these particular expeditions
will separately last for or the actual timing
of their ending. So it’s of fundamental
importance that all of us personally,
in respect of our own individual
mission, fully embrace each
one we’re accorded with
and usefully make the
most of all of them.

And in those circumstances rather than being
negatively tempted either to be narcissistically
motivated or unscrupulously hell-bent on
deploying them, as so many of you
normally do, to vaingloriously conceal their true
number; to pitifully or even deceitfully deny
their numerical existence altogether, in
your somewhat pathetically twisted
and self-centred determination to
absurdly hold back the natural
outcomes of time, why not
stop for a minute or two
and sensibly meditate
on what it is you’re
contending to do.

And consequently, why don’t you then more
appropriately and, of course, creditably
beneficially utilize each one of your
own specific birthdays, beyond
those of your childhood years that is, to
make this world that you also live
in a more welcoming and a far
better place - and happily
to your credit - than
when firstly you
arrived in it?

© Stanley V. Collymore
16 October 2019.


Author’s Remarks:
Love them or loathe them birthdays aren’t just the awareness, recognition or even the celebration of our individual presence in this world we were conceived in, delivered into and currently – assuming that we’re still alive – are a part of; although there’s no definitive certainty, in relation to the later, as to how long that period of time will be.

Moreover, birthdays have long ceased to be simply private affairs and, instead, either for good or ill have been massively transformed into costly and, more often than not, discernibly impersonal affairs where the true essence of the actual birthday is invariably forgotten.

And for those of you who rather misguidedly carry on living with the deluded perception that birthdays are basically or even exclusively private affairs than the next time after you’ve either had one or contributed to the celebration of someone else’s, then check your bank balance, and I’m sure in the process of doing so you’ll see how much a commercial entity birthdays really are.