Why I don’t celebrate birthdays and why you shouldn’t too
Birthday, the so-called “special day” of a person’s life. A day to celebrate the fact that you have travelled around the sun another time. In my 31 year life, I have had several birthday celebrations the most glamorous and memorable of them was my 8th birthday party in 1999. Whilst as a kid, it was kind of a fun day for me since I got to spend the day with my friends and I got lots of presents, I never realized the actual meaning of a birthday and the pointlessness thereof until I reached my early 20s.
The actual birthday of a person is the date of the birth of that person. However, the “birthday” we all refer to here is the anniversary of someone’s birth. With every passing year, a person gets old and gets near to death. But, the majority of the time, a birthday is synonymous with celebrations, parties and congratulations. Is it a birthday, a date to celebrate? Or on the contrary, is it a date to reflect and to grieve.
Wishing someone “happy birthday” is also in my view pointless. What does “happy birthday” means? That which can only be used for a newborn kid on the date of his/her birth. It is logically wrong to tell someone “happy birthday” thereafter. Setting the logical discrepancy out, let’s turn to the celebration of the anniversary of a birth. Hereafter, the term “birthday” is used to mean the anniversary of birth. Many people associate a birthday with an achievement. The fact that you have lived another year in this world is considered an accomplishment and hence a reason to celebrate. Some people wish others even without contemplating whether living for another year is a cause for celebrations or an achievement.
Life is challenging and full of dangers. There is a chance of you being killed, murdered or executed (by the state — in this instance). Also, there is a possibility of suicide. Therefore, the fact that none of that happened to you during the past year is argued as an achievement. Whilst there is some truth to celebrating the continuance of a person’s life. That is all based upon the fact that life is meaningful. If the continuation of life is meaningful, so does the celebration of the same. However, you have been born without your consent, you are a result of your mother and father procreating. You have been assigned a name, given a family (unless you are an orphan) and being thrown into a lifestyle that you have never expected. You can indeed change the circumstances at some period, that doesn’t mean that from the beginning of your life, you have expected all this to happen. It is similar to a computer game where a character has been put into a game and expected to perform until the “game is over”.
Taking into account the grand scale of things in the universe, everyone is insignificant. Life no matter how people glorify it is full of suffering, heartbreaks, unexpected tragic events and misery. Even if you think that your life is perfect, down the line, everyone will expect the above events one way or the other. Life is so overrated! So, people tend to forget the grand scale of things and tend to drown life’s meaninglessness in a series of petty celebrations.
So, what should we do instead of celebrating? You cannot kill yourself to get away from life (in fact, suicide is in many ways very harder to achieve even though it is one of the best options to escape from the meaninglessness of life). The viable thing to do is convert birthdays into a day of grievance and a day of reflection. Every birthday will lead you to death. Preparation for your death incrementally every birthday is the best thing you can do. Also, people should stop wishing each other for their birthday. Instead, they can reflect on the meaninglessness of the other person’s life as well as yours.
Life is overrated and glorified. Now it is high time to lower it to the place that it deserves.
