My Happy Birthday

I turned 68 today. Who woulda thunk I'd make it this far?

When I was a kid, the year 2000 seemed impossibly remote and the thought of being 47 years old almost inconceivable. But I'm now 21 years into the twenty-first century, and my body and mind are still relatively intact.

Not only that, but the Covid threat I worried about a year ago seems markedly diminished by the fact that my wife has had both of her Moderna shots and I'll be getting my second in six days. I'm not looking forward to the potential side-effects of that infamous booster, but I am looking forward to the immunity from serious illness I'll very likely soon enjoy.

This is not to say that I don't still harbor ample concerns that I won't detail here and now. But I feel plenty grateful and happy today, and I'm just going to embrace that happiness and get on with getting on. Maybe I'll still be here next year to post again, and maybe I won't. But I'm glad I'm here today, and if anyone else ever reads this, I hope you are too, whether it's your birthday or not.

Not Just Another Birthday Post

For years, I’ve published birthday blog posts where I’ve said I don’t know if I’ll be alive for my next birthday. Well, that’s never been truer than today.

This is not only because I’m a year older and closer to my end whenever that will be, but also because a deadly viral pandemic called Covid-19 is raging around the globe sickening people and claiming lives at exponential rates of increase, and older people are especially prone to die from it with respiratory failure and cardiac arrest.

I am now closer to 70 than I am to 60, placing me squarely and ominously in the “older people” camp, and I may even have one or more co-morbidities of an, as yet, undiagnosed nature that render me even more vulnerable to the virus’ death grip than does my age alone. I’ve never lived through such a time of overt existential threat, discounting, perhaps, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I’m far from certain that I’m going to come out the other side of this one.

So, this could be my last birthday blog post. Perhaps even my last blog post of any kind. Or maybe there will be many, many more if I not only come through this plague intact, but also renew my desire to write and publish after having passed through an extended dry spell of disillusionment with trying to write anything worth saying and sharing.

It’s not that I have something profound to say here today. I just want to indelibly mark this occasion rather than let it pass unrecognized. I want to express my deep gratitude for the life I’ve been fortunate to live. I say “fortunate” because I don’t begin to deserve the comforts I’ve enjoyed or the pleasures and joys I’ve experienced. I’ve wasted my life and burdened others unconscionably and let them down and worse over the decades.

But if I can make it through this pandemic with my modest passions and abilities intact, maybe I can accomplish something before the end finally comes. I wake up every morning grateful to be alive to greet another day, and I go to bed each night reciting the following prayer of my own composition:

“Lord, please forgive me and everyone else for all the unjustifiable harm we’ve caused ourselves and others and for all the times we could and should have helped ourselves or others but didn’t. And, Lord, please help all of us to do and be our very best from now on and to mindfully shine as bright beacons of wisdom, strength, equanimity, compassion, and lovingkindness lighting the path of goodness, truth, and beauty.”

If I have appreciably longer to live than I think I might, my greatest hope is that I can become a fuller and more radiant embodiment of my nightly prayer for everyone in my life.

Happy Birthday to me in the Time of Covid-19, and thanks to everyone living and long passed who’ve made it possible for me to sit here this evening writing this post in gratitude for my bountiful blessings, remorse for my failings, and deep desire to do better with the time and opportunities that remain.

Time to Shine

I used to post here every year on my birthday. Then I missed a year or maybe more. This year, I missed again. Or I decided not to post. I decided it would be better if I waited until the day after to write about the day before.

I enjoyed my birthday yesterday. Maybe more than usual. It's not that I did anything special. There was no party and cake or romantic dinner with my wife in some fancy restaurant.

Instead, I drove to my wife's Thai Buddhist temple and presented gifts to the temple in return for receiving good karma that will help me enjoy a better life in my next incarnation, or something like that. I don't believe that stuff, but I like to give and to help out the temple even if I receive nothing more from it than the pleasure of giving. And I like to please my wife who wants me to give to help out the temple and earn good karma for myself and for her.

After the presentation and the usual morning round of chanting, which I always sit back with eyes closed and listen to respectfully while the others carry on, I piled delicious potluck Asian food on my plate and savored every bite until I was uncommonly full by recent standards. And many people, including some of the monks, wished me a Happy Birthday.

After all that, I drove home while my wife remained behind, and I took a nap and then rose and started thanking people on Facebook for their birthday wishes. I really enjoyed reading their wishes and replying to them. Yes, I harbor no illusions that my birthday means anything special to them, unless they happen to share it, which some of my Facebook friends and acquaintances do. I know they're just being nice in what is probably an obligatory sort of way. After all, there's always someone we know on Facebook who's having a birthday no matter what date it is, especially if we know a lot of people on Facebook. Yet, I still appreciate, more than I ever have before, that they took a few seconds to write to me.

As I wrote on Facebook today, the older I get, and I'm well into my 60's now, the more I appreciate the simpler things in life. Yesterday I was and today I am still filled with gratitude that I was able to experience yet another birthday and that I am still alive and still in abundant possession of my modest faculties.

Is this because I know my time is running out? That's surely part of it. My time IS running out. And given what may loom in my near future, it might be better if it runs out sooner than later. But I think it's also the case that when we've been around long enough, we come to realize, if we're lucky, that many of the so-called "big" things in life--i.e., buying costly or prestigious items,  accomplishing ballyhooed goals and reaping extravagant rewards for it--is often not as fulfilling as stroking my dying cat on my lap, seeing my wife off to work in the morning, reading a wonderful essay on philosophy or science, listening to a beautiful Hiromi solo, or thanking someone for their birthday message.

I don't know if I'll be around next year to write on or soon after my birthday. I never know from year to year, and I know even less this year than ever before. Yet, from this point on, I'm going to write more and do more and be better for as long as I can. Not because I expect external rewards for it. But because it's my inner calling. To do my best and be my best.

I will focus much of my effort, wherever I am and whatever my circumstances, on producing a podcast and writing a book on free will and on becoming a professional writer and podcaster. Nobody would hire me for anything else because I'm old and have nothing to offer them. But I can speak and I can write and I can deliver something to this world that nobody else can exactly like me, especially if I stop trying to be different or better than anyone else. And I've hidden my light under a bushel for far, far too long.

Time to shine.