Bon Anniversaire

Every year as joyous an occasion as this day should be, I am always struck by the mundaneness of life and the many disappointments that have come with it.

When I was much, much younger, my mum would make such a big fuss about everyone’s birthday (she will get cakes, gifts for teachers, party packs, travel cross country to our boarding schools, you think about it, she probably did at least once). We would also wake up at midnight for everyone’s birthday to sing and pray. As stressful as that was because most times everyone was asleep and she is bugging us, I really enjoyed it). But then midnight became 11 pm the night before, then 10 pm, and then 5 am on the day, and now I am lucky if anyone remembers before 8 am. Expectations have been set so high that it is much better to ignore the day because my expectations can hardly be met. You truly cannot be disappointed if you expect nothing.

Also, in school, you had 1 aim, pass your exams. But now, with family, job, side projects and hustles, many goals are dragging me in many directions. Every year, I am more worn out as I strive towards the inevitable death that will one day come knocking.

Until some years ago, I always made an effort to do something for my birthday, but with every passing year, the will to celebrate has left me and is getting worse every year. For example, last year, I had my phone off the whole day, so I did not have to talk to anyone, and the year before, my sisters collaboratively got me a gift which made me sob uncontrollably for about 10 minutes (I hate getting gifts so till now I cannot explain why this particular gift got me emotional).

There is a song I listen to almost every year that explains how I always feel; let me quote a bit of it

So I grab my bags and go,

As far away as I can go,

Because everything is not what I used to know,

And I try to hide,

But I just can’t hide no more,

There is nothing worse than feeling like a ghost,

You say I look fine,

If only you knew what was on my mind,

You’d see a whole different side

I look back to this past year and have had many failures and shortcomings, but it is not all doom and gloom. How do I then proceed?

1. Happiness is the problem (the pursuit of happiness is an aimless one because you can never truly attain it. When you get to your last happiness “checkpoint”, new unhappiness will occur)
2. I need to remember I am not special (and that is not being defeatist, it is being realistic, so if something is going wrong, find a way to change because things will always fall apart and the world is not against me specially)
3. Need to re-evaluate my values. So far, my idealist child-like values (while not invalid or wrong) have led to lousy validation points.
4. Victimhood is fashionable, so sitting and feeling sorry for myself every year, even when everything has gone fine, becomes almost a tradition that, on a subconscious level, I might have started looking forward to it (I started feeling very, very sucky since the 13th in anticipation of this great day of suckiness)
5. I get less wrong every year (last January, I did not know the first thing about programming or could differentiate my scope of work from my task plan, but this year I am that much better. It might not seem like a lot, but in perspective, it is.

This time next year, I hope I am in a much better mental state and doom and gloom, even if not absent, is totally reduced to the barest minimum.

So starting now, I will answer every phone call wishing me happy birthday with glee, forgive those that forget my birthday because life happens and take my wife’s advice to do a movie night with my kids to celebrate today.

Welcome to my Ted talk and see around next time!