Happy Birthday to Me

I sincerely want to extend my gratitude to all of my friends and family for providing me with such warm birthday wishes and acknowledging me on my birthday. I really appreciate it.

Now that is over with, I would like to take a moment to say how I feel about birthdays...

As you get older, birthdays become increasingly more depressing. They serve as yearly reminder, an anniversary signifying that you are twelve months closer to death. The fanfare is gone. The colors, the excitement, the balloons, the cake, the wrapping paper, the candles. Done. Over. Once you hit your mid-teens, it is all for naught. Of course, this is with a few glaring exceptions.

• Your 18th birthday: A general sense of excitement and anticipation is readily felt on this momentous day. You are finally legally an adult. You can finally be tried, convicted, and place in a smallish, gray box with someone named "Spike" for the crimes you have committed.
• Your 21st birthday: You are now legally able to imbibe the fruits of the vine. Too bad you probably won't remember it.
• Your 30th birthday: A celebration that you are no longer in your twenties. The self-absorption that you once wore like your favorite pair of jeans must be finally tossed aside. Time to pull on those chinos and don those loafers.
• Your 50th birthday: A birthday with colors shrouded in habiliments the of the grave. The apex of the hill has been reached and there is nowhere to go but down

Perhaps my feelings stem from the fact that I share a birthday month with my oldest daughter. Sarah, who just recently turned four, spent a wonderful day in the autumnal sun with family, friends, and a two-story bounce house that took up the better part of my backyard. To say that she was excited, would be putting it mildly.

I think she finds it strange that when my birthday approaches, just over a week after hers, that I don't meet it head-on with the same zest and enthusiasm.

Ah, the innocence of youth. I should let enjoy her birthday for a few more years. I'll wait until next year to tell her about Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy...

Leeches

I will be honest. I am becoming somewhat disenchanted with people taking advantage of me. In fact, it's seems to be increasing at a relatively alarming rate.

For example, I typically buy coffee to take with me into the workplace. Likewise, my collaborative partner also will purchase coffee to bring with her on a weekly basis. We will typically consume about two cups of coffee each for a total of four daily. The pot that holds our freshly made dark roast java usually contains about six cups of coffee. Two pots a day would yield twelve cups. 12 - 4 = 8.

I wonder where the other eight cups go...

I have a few ideas.

My father once told me the story of a itinerant farm hand who frequented their home each summer in the hope of finding gainful employment. While he was a hard worker, this farmhand had a troubling habit -- he would perpetually bum tobacco of the other workers and never repay his debt. One day, he asked a co-worker if he could "bum a chew" from him as they were riding out the field on a wagon. The man replied sure, stood up, opened his pouch of tobacco, urinated into it, and handed it to the beggar. He noted "that's how I keep it moist..."

The wanderer never bummed a chew again.

I sure would hate to have to start peeing in the coffee can...

What about me?

It could be the fact that I was an only child that contributes to this overwhelming sense of self-importance that I tend to place on myself.

Or it could be that each day I am constantly reminded, in a number of different ways, that I just really am not significant.

Of course I'm really not talking about myself as an individual. Rather, what I am referring to is this suffocating sense that I have developed in my working life that everyone's stuff is way more important than my stuff. I have a hard time accepting this. I don't think my demands are that unrealistic. I want to believe that there is as much importance in what I do for my students in class as what others do for theirs. Yet, it is that constant, stinging reminder that I might not be just as important as I think...

This experience tends to demonstrate a microcosm of a much greater societal issue -- we all live in our own bubble and that bubble is becoming increasingly smaller at a rapid rate. For most of us, we are caught in a tangled web of technology that has provided us with an invisible digital barrier bound by the fibers of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other forms of social interaction. What a tangled web we weave. How I long for the 20th century. The email inbox that once confounded us by demanding our attention with a little "ding" is now just readily accepted as something that must be done frequently, daily. Like bathing.

We have lost ourselves in the digital personas that we have carefully constructed by adding our friends, commenting to others, sharing our accomplishments and the like. These high intensity technological demands we have placed on ourselves, both as a society and as individuals, has led the decay of empathy. We are no longer able to relate to each other, in spite of being closer than ever.

So I will try not to take it personally. I will continue to consider the needs and demands of others doing what I can to make sure that we can both co-exist peacefully. I will work, learn, and live each day hoping that someday we will all seem to be aware of what each of us is doing, place value on it, and respect it for what it is.

Positively Annoying

I am not the most ebullient person you will ever meet.  In fact, some might go as far as to say that I am a bit "glass half-empty".

I like to think that the glass simply had a hole in it.

Yet it remains to be seen (by me) why so many people strive so hard to remain positive on a daily basis.  War. Escalating fuel prices.  Escalating food prices.  The dismal state of our economy.  Political division and unrest.  The list goes on and on.  With so many reasons to be negative, think of the energy that one would have to expend to stay afloat in this sea of positivity.  Our culture is lazy.  No one is going to argue with that.  We have spent the better part of the 20th century developing technologies that will ensure the completeness of our laziness, resulting in the demise of our culture, our way of life, and ultimately our country.

Why then would we exhaust so much energy in "keeping on the sunny side of life"?  

Because we have always held on to the hope that what is through the looking glass is better than what we see in the mirror.

Excuse me, I have to go fill up my glass again.