Happy Birthday: Why Do We Celebrate Birthdays?

Why do we celebrate our birthdays?  Today is my birthday, and admittedly, I am excited to spend time with my family.  Each year, it feels special when my family takes a day to remember and appreciate what I mean to them.  We generally enjoy dinner at a restaurant of my choice.

Birthdays allow us to look at ourselves within the context of society.  Our laws have imposed age limits on nearly everything- 18 to vote, 21 to drink alcohol legally, 62 to receive Social Security benefits.  Some cultures show great respect to the elderly.  In my view, there is something wrong with this perception of age.  Our birthdays are meant to remember the day we came into this world.  If we view birthdays as a stepping stone to benefits, we lose sight of the significance surrounding the celebration of life.

Each birthday, we wonder if we have accomplished enough given our age, whether we are ahead or behind the predetermined pace.  Abraham Lincoln said it well--"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count.  It's the life in your years."

When we are young, it becomes exciting to advance to the next year because, on the surface, age is associated with increased freedom.  When old, we wish the years would pass more slowly because we begin to realize we only have a limited amount of time on this planet.  In his short work "On Old Age", Seneca discusses our perceptions of time and existence.  As he grows older, Seneca realizes he had developed the habit of thinking about his life with regret at the loss of promise and opportunity.  Then, he reminds himself that young men ought to think of death just as much as old men.  Each day we wake up, he writes, is a gift.  Time takes on a different meaning when we view it as a gift rather than a resource.  

This birthday, I will attempt to view time as a gift, not a commodity.  Even though life can be difficult and hard to accept, the time we have is not something we own.  We were given life completely independent of our will.  Perhaps we can all respect life as an immeasurable, unquantified gift and protect it from the effort to transform it into a commodity.