Birthday Bash

It's my Dearly Beloved's birthday today.

I'm not going to reveal her age, not because it's especially advanced (in any event, she's younger than me) but because like most people, she's sensitive about the fact that yet another year has gone by. Which means (according to her) that she's no longer in the first bloom of her youth.

Big deal. To me, she's beautiful.

Naturally, she's been coping with the fact of her "advanced" age by subjecting Yours Truly to a mutually exclusive cross-current of emotional demands. On the one hand, she's been a bit weepy because (again, according to her) her biological clock is now ticking just that tad louder, meaning I had better get my act into gear and start co-operating on the producing offspring front. As if it hasn't been bad enough fending off demands for grandchildren from my parents! On the other hand, she's made it clear that I'd better come up with the goods present-wise on the day in question or else! And not just presents, either, but a night out on the town as well.

In other words, she doesn't want to be reminded that it's her birthday; but at the same time, she wants to be reminded that it's her birthday.

You can see my dilemma, can't you? Especially since I've never been an "events" kind of guy. Birthdays and such (my own included) are just another day in the calendar; not, I hasten to add, because I'm living in a state of denial about my advancing decreptitude (afterall, I can't hide from the mirror in the bathroom), but because it just strikes me as entirely artificial. What makes the anniversary of one's arrival in the world any more noteworthy than any other day? I mean, it's not like you did something original being born; why make a fuss?

Now, before you accuse me of being a miserbale old git with no sense of occassion, let me remind you that our calendar isn't exactly short of phoney "occassions" that have become little more than expressions of the laissez faire lust for wealth accumulation. Take Valentine's Day. Why should I fork out fifty bucks for flowers and another hundred or so for a meal just to tell my Dearly Beloved the same thing I tell her every other day of the week: that I love her lots and lots? And how come it's always the bloke who has to pay? And how "romantic" is it really to propose marriage on Valentine's Day? Heck, it doesn't exactly take much imagination to do the obvious, so you gotta wonder about a scenario where every couple at every table in every restaurant are doing exactly the same thing. I mean, isn't part of romance meant to be its originality, its uniqueness to the couple in question? Sheesh, if my partner wanted to wine and dine me on the same day of the year as everyone else, I'd frankly suspect they were too lousy to trouble over me the rest of the time.

So, okay, maybe a birthday doesn't exactly fall into the same cheesy category as Valentine's Day. But by the same token, it's not that big a deal, either. I mean, I know Clive James began his autobiography by suggesting the two big events of 1939 were his birth and the outbreak of World War II, but I think most of us will agree that our own nativity isn't quite worth the same amount of fanfare. Besides which, the increasing materialism of modern society makes it next to impossible to provide the birthday boy or girl with a gift that one feels is adequate for the occassion (or, more correctly, their sense of the occassion). Which is why I tend to go for the gift voucher. Okay, so a gift voucher is probably about as original as a "romantic" Valentine's Day dinner, but at least it has the virtue of practicality; and if the end result is disatisfaction with the purchase arising from use of said voucher, I'll have the consolation of knowing that it was self-inflicted and not a product of my ineptitude.

Ultimately, all the fuss about birthdays and the sundry other "anniversaries" is an expression of our insecurity, usually manifested as a need to "feel special". As if the fact of being alive wasn't special enough. Sure, okay, us humans are emotional creatures, and evey now and then we like to know that others think highly of us (or, at least, are prepared to tell us they hold us in esteem). But fair crack of the whip; if you need to be told by others that you're special without already knowing it yourself, you're going to be in trouble from the outset. And not just "special" in that phoney-baloney way beloved of TV agony aunts and self-help gurus; but special as in absolutely and utterly unique. There's no-one in the entire cosmos like you - and there never will be. Ever. No matter the permutations of physics and chemistry and biology, the universe will never produce another you. Which, granted, is probably a good thing in the case of Adolf Hitler or the average professional wrestler. But as for you - well, God really did break the mold when the cosmos came up with your good self. Just as God breaks the mold when the cosmos comes up with every other self.

In other words, being born ain't that big a deal. But you are. Understand the difference, and maybe the need to "feel special" won't be such a pain in the existential backside.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign that something is eating us. (Peter de Vries)