Laps around the Sun
Why do we celebrate birthdays?
I have just completed another lap around the Sun, my 27th birthday. It was a small, brief gathering. It was nice being able to enjoy it with food, drinks and chit-chats in the company of people I like.
My 27th. It feels like I just finished high school yesterday. That was a decade ago! I am more conscious of how fast time flies. Which got me thinking, why do we celebrate our birthdays? Why do we observe this annual event that marks each complete revolution we individually have made around the sun?
Maybe it’s the modern, democratized version of honoring annual events tied to the Gregorian calendar? Because in the past, we honored the birth of very important people. Like Christ. Now anyone’s birthday is celebrated.
Maybe because progress and economics has lifted many (but not all) people out of poverty and brought wealth to the masses? Where coming-of-age rituals and rites of passage used to mark a child’s ascent to adulthood, a one-off event for an individual if they make it out of childhood at all, we can now do so for everyone in every year.
I think it has to do with the passage of time. Or, our perception of time. We’re biological beings. Our internal clock is not dictated by gears moving at a constant rate. Our clock is tuned by the changes in nature. We sleep at night, and wake up in daylight. Back then, we coordinated our activities according to changes like position of the sun, phases of the moon and the changing seasons. Today, we can fine-tune and coordinate all our activities down to the millisecond.
Our perception of time seems warped because we’re comparing it to mechanical time. Think about it: days can pass by so quickly that it feels like everything’s blended together, but try to hold a plank for a just minute and it feels like an eternity. A year can fly by like nothing, and I’d feel like I’ve accomplished nothing.🙁
Time is fleeting. It flies whether or not we are having fun.
Why do we celebrate our birthdays? I think it’s a marker; a milestone for each completed laps around the sun. A checkpoint; to remind us to be fully present. To just have this moment and live in it. Look how far we’ve come, was it that long ago we started out? Reflect on that. See how far the road ahead looks? Take a moment, because pretty soon it will be gone.
Your time on Earth is short. Each lap around the Sun is a victory lap. So go celebrate your birthdays. It’s not a trivial thing. Celebrate it with people we care about and celebrate theirs too, they won’t be around forever either. So go have your cake and eat it too! 🥳
I agree that birthdays are a kind of "private holiday." The celebration and remembrance of the existence of a person who is important to those around them. A celebration of the remarkableness of ordinary life. On the one hand, every day is just another day, but it is also somebody's birthday and therefore special.
Happy belated birthday!