So, dammit, it's my birthday. Birthmorn. Technically I don't know exactly what time I was born off of the top of my ever-graying head, but it happened on the 22nd of December. And as of now it's sometime past midnight, making it that fated day, that glorious day, that day that the collective spirit of the World expressed some flatulence that coalesced into the form of the skinny kid that became the slightly less skinny kid that is me.
It's my birthday! I'm 29. Correction: I have completed 29 years of life and am now barreling one minute at a time into my 30th year. I'm well on my way. I'm already stacking up the seconds that will inexorably pile up into the minutes that will callously add into the hours that will shamelessly become the 365 days (already less than 365 days as I type) that will make me 30 years old.
Eek!
It's not really that big of a deal, I suppose. They say that you are really only as old as you feel. And though I don't know what credentials gives "them" the right to say the things that "they" say, I feel that there's a kernel of truth to that. I really do believe that how you approach life truly affects your mental health, directly affecting your physical health. And reader, if you know me then you know that I am far from "adult," far from sophisticated, far from bitter, jaded, or malcontent. If you know me then you know that I like a good laugh. You know that I like to play pranks. You know that, despite the fact that I am clothed, not cloven hooved, and missing some horns and a pan flute, that I much relate to that merry-making, ne'er-do-well, demi-god, Pan himself. You know, therefore, that I am a soul that is out to suck the marrow out of life and to enjoy, or at least appreciate, every last moment.
So here I am, barely 29, already contemplating 30, and yet still quite youthful in spirit (not that 29 is old by any means. Far from it!). I'm consistently told that I don't quite look my age, that I appear to be on the younger end of the 20th decade of my life. And this, I think, is directly related to that youthful spirit. I'm constantly amazed by people that I meet that are younger than me, and yet appear years my senior. Their relatively few years hang on their faces as a mask of a short life of stress and unhappiness. And though I know that I have been blessed with a fairly good lot in life, and have therefor had more to smile about and less to frown over, I know that these lawyers, stock brokers, and otherwise prosperous folks could find more to be happy about in their lives. Life, after all, really is just one large prank. We start in diapers, spend a lifetime of living, loving, and learning, gaining wisdom and experience, only to end back up in diapers. Show me the justice of that. So what else can we do but laugh? Laugh through life, enjoy your good health while you have it, and don't waste time allowing the small things to affect you so much that your youth is taken from you prematurely.
So as I sit in this coffee shop, watching the skiers go by (it's been snowing for well over a week in Portland, and we now have over a foot of snow) down the street, on this, my birthday, I'm forced to reconcile with 29. Maybe we can be friends. Maybe we can learn to live with each other, 29 and I. Maybe 29 won't be so ready to abandon me to 30 the way that 28 left me for 29. Or then again, maybe I should just preemptively make peace with 30 and hope that it'll put in a good word for me with 31.
Regardless, it's my birthday. I just hope that the cake doesn't melt under all of those candles.
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