Reasons for Celebrating Birthdays

Why do we celebrate birthdays? What is it that we are proud of? Is it because against all the odds we managed to survive another year? Are we marking the progress we have made, our cumulative achievements and possessions? Is a birthday the expression of hope for us to live our life for the year to come?

None would matter maybe..

If it is the past year that we are commemorating, would we still drink to it if we know we are going to die soon? Not likely. But why? How is the future relevant (our own looming death) when it is the past that we are celebrating? We cannot change the past. No future event can spoil the fact that we got it through for another year. Then why not celebrate this fact?

Because it is not the past that is foremost on our minds. Our birthdays are about the future, not of the past. We are observing having gone so far because such successful resilience allows us to live forward. We’re proud of our potentials to enjoy life. Birthdays are expressions of unbridled, blind faith in our own suspended mortality.

But if this holds true, certainly as we grow older we have less and less cause to celebrate. What reason do octogenarians have to drink to one more year if that gift is far from guaranteed? Life provides diminishing returns: the longer you invest, the less you take the marginal dividends of the fruits of your labor, like life insurance. Indeed, based on actuary tables, it becomes increasingly less rational to celeberate as we grow older.

Therefore, we are forced into the conclusion that birthdays are about self-delusionally defying death. Birthdays are about preserving the illusion of immortality. Birthdays are forms of acting out our imaginative thinking. By celebrating our existence, we bestow on ourselves protective charms against the nonsense and whimsical nature of a cold, impersonal, and and most often a universe bombarded with hostility.

And most of the time, it works. Have a no prescription - Happy birthday!

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