Are you dreading your birthday? Hate being another year older, possibly not wiser, and probably deeper in debt? Feeling old? Wondering when all the promises told to you in your youth will come true or are you jaded and cynical over all that could have been but wasn’t? Well, throw all that out the window and light up the birthday cake! Here’s what birthdays really are and they aren’t about your birth!
Shifting Perspective
My birthday was the other day. Once you pass a certain age, it’s nothing but “another year older” memes. Which got me thinking about birthdays and what they are. Sure, you were born so many years ago on a certain date, usually about 9 months after your father had a happy moment at some point that day. Before that, you were half egg and half sperm. You can get quite philosophical about what you were before then and how even food, chemical molecules and various events came into making “you.” So you’re actually older than the “years” assigned to you on your “birth date”.
But I digress.
We’re a year older on our birthday. But a year is an arbitrary measure of time, though a stellar one at that. Literally. Since your last birthday, the planet has traveled around the sun once. Let that sink in. I find it remarkable. We’ve traveled around the sun. That’s quite a journey.
One might even say it’s revolutionary.
Be as Revolutionary as the Earth
Over the past year, the earth has been trucking along, day by day, to revolve around the sun. It’s journeyed billions of miles to return to the starting point that was your last birthday. In one revolution it’s seen a lot of changes. In your own life, time wasn’t just passing. Events were unfolding. Emotions rose and fell, problems cropped up. Maybe everything changed or perhaps it mostly stayed the same.
You’re on a planet revolving in space right now. Its path back to this approximate location will take another year. While it’s on its journey, why not explore your own? Birthdays are markers of where the earth was on its journey when you were born. Birthdays aren’t just about your birth or even your age. They are about the journey – stellar and personal.
We’ve lost sight of the journey. In a year from now, the earth will return to this location but it will be slightly different. What about you? Have you thought about your journey and where you want to be? In a year from now, don’t you want to have solved some of your current problems so that the new problems are better quality ones?
We Are All Astronauts
Each of us is on a personal journey and our journey may resemble someone else’s journey but it is unique to us all the same. It is ours to explore and enjoy while spaceship Earth journeys again and again around the sun, changing bit by bit on each of its birthdays, whenever that day is.
Don’t just mark the passage of time, saying you’re just another year older. You’ve come really far, literally and figuratively. We are always changing and the journey is ongoing, even if we pay it no attention. Pay attention. See each new birthday as embarking on another year’s journey. That’s its true meaning and measure. We don’t know how many we will get. The earth isn’t standing still so neither should you.
Be revolutionary.
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