Thursday, January 8, 2015

Of Birthdays Past....


Birthdays are a strange thing. As a child, you look forward to them...not simply for the presents, though that helps, but because there is this need to turnover another year, to click your age up one more notch in the seemingly endless march to get somewhere else. There are all these benchmarks we strive for:

When I'm 10, I can stay home by myself for a few hours.
When I'm 12, I'm not longer considered a child by hotels and restaurants.
When I'm 17, I can drive.
When I'm 18, I can vote.
When I'm 21, I can drink.
When I'm 25, I can rent a car.

Eventually that checklist runs out and a birthday is just a reminder that you, like everyone before and everyone after, is just getting older. But that's not all bad either. It's another one of those times when you slow down and appreciate the things around you and contemplate your relative insignificance in the grand scheme of things. Everyone needs to have these days of self-reflection and it's kind of the world to set aside one day a year remind you of that. 

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