Every year I've had this blog, I've written a little something for my birthday. And this year is no different!
But aren't birthdays for kids? First of all, why should kids have all the fun? If being an adult requires draining life of all fun, wonder, and joy so you can pay bills and work until you die, well, then, what's the point of that?
I've always liked the message of Ferris Bueller's Day Off (yes, I am that old!): "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." And birthdays are great days to do that!
Besides, as I've been saying on this blog since 2015 (and for a long time before that),
The fact that we are alive to experience the beauty, horror, and mystery of the universe is pretty cool. Birthdays are a time to reflect on the incalculably precious privilege of becoming a speck of the universe that, for however short a time, is able to contemplate life, the universe, and everything. That’s something worth celebrating!
Why would you not want to celebrate birthdays, and help others celebrate theirs? This is why I like to wish people happy birthday on social media. A cynical, small-minded killjoy might say I only do this so I get birthday greetings on my birthday. I do get plenty of those, and I thank everyone for them! But that's not really why I do it. We're all in this wild, mixed-up universe together, and if that doesn't make you care about other people, I really don't know what else to say.
So what have I done to celebrate this birthday? I had some really good pre-birthday fun with social activities over the weekend (including a scifi bookclub at a brewery and a Hobbit Day celebration of Bilbo and Frodo's birthdays!).
What to do with a birthday on a weekday? I've been working on maintaining the sort of work-life balance I started trying in the last few years with the confluence of tenure, the pandemic, and my mid-40's. Since Mondays are a flexible, work-from-home day for me, today I did some work at home in the morning and then I took some work with me for lunch on the patio of a local pub (see above).
I took a long walk around downtown Chattanooga (something I used to do often when I lived close to downtown), and then I went to see a matinee of the new horror movie It Lives Inside (you've heard of Christmas horror movies, and even Thanksgiving horror, now get ready for Durgā Pūjā horror!)
(Lest any bean-counting bureaucrats read this: when you teach horror and philosophy, movies count as work, too! And if the bean-counters don't buy that line of argument, let's call it a healthy work-life balance. And if they don't buy that, well, one bit of wisdom my advancing years have taught me is that one must partition one's cares discerningly, or less delicately, have fewer fucks to give).
After the movie, I stopped by a local cupcake shop and headed back home to my spouse and cats for Indian take-out and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, which was delightful. All in all, not a bad way to slide into the penumbra between my mid- and late- 40's!
Have I, in my advanced age, finally gotten the hang of this life thing? Nah. But like Ferris Bueller, I do enjoy looking around once in a while. And maybe, just maybe, it's taking this time to experience joy and wonder and our connections with each other and this unfathomable mound of being we call the universe that really does make all this worthwhile.
Or maybe not! Who knows? Happy birthday to me, and to you, dear reader, whenever your next birthday may be!
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