Birthdays

By Stanley Collymore

Birthdays, if accurately stated, are the distinctive

landmarks that tell us how far along life’s

personal journey every one of us has

individually travelled. However,

what they most definitely don’t do is to accurately

indicate how long these particular expeditions

will separately last for or the actual timing

of their ending. So it’s of fundamental

importance that all of us personally,

in respect of our own individual

mission, fully embrace each

one we’re accorded with

and usefully make the

most of all of them.

And in those circumstances rather than being

negatively tempted either to be narcissistically

motivated or unscrupulously hell-bent on

deploying them, as so many of you

normally do, to vaingloriously conceal their true

number; to pitifully or even deceitfully deny

their numerical existence altogether, in

your somewhat pathetically twisted

and self-centred determination to

absurdly hold back the natural

outcomes of time, why not

stop for a minute or two

and sensibly meditate

on what it is you’re

contending to do.

And consequently, why don’t you then more

appropriately and, of course, creditably

beneficially utilize each one of your

own specific birthdays, beyond

those of your childhood years that is, to

make this world that you also live

in a more welcoming and a far

better place - and happily

to your credit - than

when firstly you

arrived in it?

© Stanley V. Collymore

16 October 2019.

Author’s Remarks:

Love them or loathe them birthdays aren’t just the awareness, recognition or even the celebration of our individual presence in this world we were conceived in, delivered into and currently – assuming that we’re still alive – are a part of; although there’s no definitive certainty, in relation to the later, as to how long that period of time will be.

Moreover, birthdays have long ceased to be simply private affairs and, instead, either for good or ill have been massively transformed into costly and, more often than not, discernibly impersonal affairs where the true essence of the actual birthday is invariably forgotten.

And for those of you who rather misguidedly carry on living with the deluded perception that birthdays are basically or even exclusively private affairs than the next time after you’ve either had one or contributed to the celebration of someone else’s, then check your bank balance, and I’m sure in the process of doing so you’ll see how much a commercial entity birthdays really are.