U-31

May 4, 2011 – U-31

On the eve of my birthday I am reminded of how old I am.  Sucks huh.  Now on the verge of turning 31 and no longer dirty 30 I reminisce about growing up and remember that having a birthday was something to look forward to.  On your birthday there were parties, presents, cake, friends, and family.  It was an exciting time for our childhood. The day was all about us.  We dressed in our most impressive outfits.  We got our favorite foods.  In elementary we would bring cupcakes and cake to school for our classmates.  And when we got older there were certain birthdays that just meant something more.  When we turned 16 that meant we were responsible enough to drive a car.  At the age of 18 we were legal.  For some we bought lotto, we bought cigarettes, went to Indian Casinos, and we even went to go to our first gentleman’s club.  Then at the age of 21 we could drink legally.  No more asking the older sister to buy the alcohol, or trying to use a fake ID.  We were legal.  And after that for some reason there was nothing to look forward to on your birthday.  There were no more birthdays’ that had any significant meaning to it.  It becomes a sad reality of the reminder that you are no longer young.  We convince ourselves that we are still young.  ‘Forties are the new thirties.  Thirties are the new twenties.’  But in reality forty is still forty.  Thirty is still thirty.  Each year becomes a mid-life crisis.  We look back on our lives and look at the things we didn’t do or the things we didn’t accomplish.  We dread the thought of our birthdays.  We no longer look at it as a celebration but as a reminder that our lives may not be as perfect as we want it to be.  We drown ourselves in alcoholic beverages to push the memories of the years past in the back of our minds so we can try and start a new year on a clean slate.  We create to do lists to make ourselves better.  So we can say ‘This year I will ……’   

So I sit here no longer in my twenties but now in my thirties, trying to create my own list of 'This year I will.....' And to think that the past 10 years have gone by in the blink of an eye.  I can still remember graduating college like it was yesterday.  So I ask myself what happened in the past ten years to make it seem like college was just yesterday.  And I can honestly say nothing happened since I graduated college.  Well nothing spectacular for myself.  For others I saw them grow up.  I saw friends become adults.  They got married, had kids, bought a house, and got a career all while I sat there waiting for life to begin.  You see I was trying to follow the prototypical life plan.  Step 1: get good grades in high school to go to College.  Step 2: graduate College.  Step 3: get a job.  Step 4: get married.  Step 5: buy a house.  Step 6: have kids.  Step 7: buy things that we really don’t need to supplement our mundane lives to create a sense of happiness.  Ten years ago I saw myself having all these things by the time I turned 30.  I saw myself married, with kids, in a house, with a good job.  But something happened.  I didn’t follow the steps.  I didn’t want to follow the script that our societal mindset created.  I needed more.  I needed to take my own steps.  I needed free will.  But does free will really exist, or does the mass media and our culture control us, our desires and actions, from the moment we are born?  Mass media has us chasing cars and buying objects that we really don’t need.  We have been working in jobs we hate, just so we can buy what we really don’t need.  And then we turn these objects into people and people into objects.  We create this perfection of nothingness. We are trained to be dissatisfied with what we have.  We need the new even though we have the old.  We need the faster even though we have the fast.  We need this year’s model even though we have last year’s.  We want more money so we can spend more money on things we don’t really need.   In reality the only thing that ever really gives us any genuine satisfaction is caring for other people.  The only thing that actually makes life more fulfilling is our love for others.  When I help you I’m really helping myself.  Saying yes to humanity and to the connection that exists among all people.  This is what life is about.  So for the past couple of years I have been waiting for life to begin.  But what I really think is Life was waiting for me to begin.  So this year’s birthday I am reminded not of last year but the possibilities of the coming year.  ‘So this year I will ……. Live.’