FEBRUARY 19 — I celebrate my birthday this week and as usual I follow my one birthday rule: not to work.
Besides taking four days off work, I have also been having a break from social media though I still do make the odd post on Facebook about my dog waking me up at ass-o-clock in the morning.
As the saying goes, it is meaningless to try and care for others when you do not take care of yourself.
When I was much, much younger I would get resentful when I didn’t get as many birthday wishes as I liked or if my then-significant others did not put in “enough” effort.
It hit me, then, that only I truly knew what I wanted on the day — expecting others to read my mind was silly and just setting myself up for disappointment.
Now I buy myself what I know I would like, choose the restaurants that cater to my tastes and spend the day with people I choose. In life we don’t often get to choose our circumstances but it feels good to be able to, on this date, be as self-indulgent as I want.
I don’t see this as narcissistic; we are often too hard on ourselves, too preoccupied with making other people happy.
Yet it is a natural thing to want to be cherished, to have your needs anticipated and be spoiled once in a while.
If you are unable to cherish yourself for just one day a year, I would think that is rather sad.
Of course birthdays are also a time to take stock of your past, present and future. The path I seem to have stumbled on, in a semi-drunken state, has been, at the very least, interesting.
Talking to old friends, reminiscing about other paths not taken, we have come to agree that there is no point regretting past decisions. It is a fruitless endeavour and there is no guarantee that things would have turned out well if we had made different decisions.
“After all,” I told a friend, “You might end up getting hit by a bus. And all your fancy dreams and goals would have come to naught anyhow.”
I think of another saying, one said about one of my favourite singers. “Although she wishes to, she can’t control the wind.” Sometimes a path has no other turnings, no left or right but only one way ahead and you can either walk it miserably or slow down and find a way to enjoy the journey.
Perhaps my life would be different if I wasn’t so prickly, sharp-tongued or put more effort into being a little less forthright. I’d like to think, though, that my disdain of artifice and my refusal to be anyone other than myself has brought more good than bad.
I will soon be 42 and the thought of having to work at being someone I am not honestly feels as exhausting as I thought it would be a long time ago. Thus I have just chosen not to even try.
As the years go by, I will probably continue to be myself as really, it is hard enough to maintain one face so why people bother putting up facades is something I do not understand.
If you had a terrible birthday this year, I hope you will have a better one next year.
If you have yet to celebrate your birthday, I wish you a happy one in advance.
My only wish this year, is that you, whoever is reading this, that you have a good day and that you have more good days than bad this year and, if I can be greedy, the next.
May your every day be as happy as a birthday can be.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
