The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

Ok, slightly morbid non? I usually try to subscribe to the lighter pleasures of revolving around the sun and not thinking too much about these things, but I just thought I’d mention this as it happens to be the birthday of one of my good friends today and it got me to thinking. I do not, and have never really enjoyed birthdays, not just my own, others too. I know this might sound a tad selfish, but I really truly am confused by it as a concept. Don’t get me wrong I am all for celebrating something or someone just for the bloody heck of it, but what I have to gripe about regarding birthdays, is that it isn’t celebrating something for the sheer mirth and merriment of it, it is because you feel like you have to. We are for some reason chained down to the notion that people should feel happy and thankful for the fact they still exist, that it loses any sense of significance. Everyone knows that organised fun ceases to achieve what it sets out to do. Once again, I don’t merely mean my own birthday, occassionally I feel like I should give back and share the joy with others that are making an effort for my birthday, and for this due to the ingrained Catholic guilt cast upon me, I sometimes dabble in celebration. But not often. And only when I am feeling particularly self-cherishing and I think I could benefit from some self-indulgent lamenting on the life of ‘me’. What!? That is exactly what I would be doing, as others are when they celebrate their own, so next time you decide to hire out a swanky nightspot that will be paid for by you and your friends all kindly clubbing in together, or when you book the most expensive restaurant on the equator, remember that not everyone is filled with as much glee as you are that you are achieving what to me, seems like a no brainer, continuing to not be dead. Yes, I know, I know, what a joyful little creature I am. But if at this point you are forevermore turned by my convincing pondering, then just let me really hammer the point home. So. Where was I, um..birthdays and that, they are boring, insignificant and well just quite selfish, “everyone celebrate me”.  For the good of my loved ones, I would like to celebrate them and make them feel special and adorn them with thoughtful and meaningful gifts, but buying presents has always been one of those things that I loathe doing, because I am really terrible at shopping, what I really should do is, upon the event of seeing something that I deem suitable or fitting for a certain person is buy it there and then, like buying all my Christmas presents in June or something, but that seems to me a rather pious way to live, and well organised and well a bit lame. I know, I know, once again you are thinking, ‘well that’s really bloody mean of you to think this way about celebrating your loved ones’, but I don’t mean it to be that way, I just mean that if we are going to have birthdays, that a present should be something that is given out of true certainty(of say, for example on par with the certainty of Gandhi) that someone will relish receiving it and not just because there was only a Marks and Spencers on your way to the pub after work, or that you are buying them one because they bought you one, that was really nice and thoughtful..blah blah and so on. Why can’t we just buy presents for people sometimes because we think that people might want them all of the time and furthermore, if we all stop treating birthdays as celebration with the approach of a nazi general then we would all be in better stead and perhaps all enjoy them and..life more. Yes. I for these reasons will be remaining sturdy on morals and not at all because I have achieved very little for my years, no certainly not for those reasons.