Birthdays are ambivalent events. They are delightful. You see, the loved ones care about you, they wish you all the good things in life. They really want you to be happy. Sharing a bottle of wine, having a nice dinner with friends is lovely.
However, birthdays are also sources of a urge to assess your life and see where it is going. Which chapter of life you are about to close and which one you are about to begin? What is the overarching theme, the common point, the distant resolution that makes those chapters parts of one novel? Is there really a necessity to have such elements of unity in life, or is it just to make it simpler to think about? You don’t really need to convince a publisher to think it is good after you die, eh? Should I be looking back and see what impossible things I have achieved or what really simple things I screwed up? Should I think about the current chapter and decide what I want to do before it ends? Or should I outline all my goals for next chapters and invest in them, thinking that future is not too risky or the returns are not too low?
Best questions are the ones without answers. Ones with answers get boring too soon. I guess life is not too short as most people say. It is so long that we need questions without answers to move it around, make it a dynamic.
Best birthdays are ambivalent ones. If there is an architect of this life, she hated certainty, absolutes and one-sidedness. Here we go again for the 24th time.