Friday, January 11, 2013
Today is my birthday.
When I was growing up my birthday was a big event, I would celebrate for a few days, going out with friends, having dinners with family, receiving gifts and attention, having everybody do what I want because it's my birthday - I loved it - well, I loved it but there was always stress related to it - I remember on the day of my birthday I would always have something to cry about, it became a joke that I should celebrate the day before or after because on my actual birthday I would be crying for some reason. Birthday's have been a big thing in my family and a big thing amongst my friends, so the stress was a mixture of expectation as wondering if my friends will prove their love to me on my birthday, and of anxiety as I didn't like big events where I am in the center of attention in the spot light, I prefer being a guest that steels the stage, and not the guest of honor that is expected to be on the stage.
I realize now that the more build up I had created towards my birthday and the bigger the excitement and expectation, the bigger the fall was, not because my friends/family didn’t live up to my expectations, they always did, and even went over board with throwing me surprise parties and extra attention, but the fall came from a point of balancing the energy, as I have been on an energetic high in excitement and expectation, and the higher the high the lower the low to balance it out, as the mind exist within the polarity of high and low energies.
In the past 5 years I realized that birthdays are actually an odd celebration, because it's really just another day, a day that according to a specific calendar represents the day I was born in, but so what? Why are we making this day into something special? How is the fact that I was born so and so years ago on this day, according to a specific calendar, have anything to do with today, with what is going on here in the moment? Why are we allowing this costume of celebrating birthdays to exist when we see all the anxiety people experience around it? Why do we allow this construct of expectation to exist in regards to a day? How have we all been duped into believing there is something special about this day?
So in the past few years I became more cynical about my birthday, believing I have transcended the need to celebrate it, and within that feeling myself as superior to have released myself from the chains that society had tied on me to begin with, I felt superior because most everybody around me was still participating within / as the birthday scam, still believing birthdays are worth celebrating and I experienced myself as beyond it. I was arrogant about it, making jokes to my friends about how this day is non sense.
Today I was faced with the deception of my arrogance. Here on the farm not many people know it's my birthday, so there is no point expecting anything, and in general, since I've been here, I see that birthdays are very low key, almost ignored completely compared to what I was used to. Here, in this environment it's clear, that everything within me in relation to my birthday is my own creation, and not a reaction/response/result to my friends'/family's relationship to birthdays as I have justified to myself back home - since no one here is making a big deal out of it, yet I am having a "birthday experience" - not because those around me are giving it value, but because I am.
What I see is that I am far from being over birthdays - I see is that I desire the attention, I want people to know it's my birthday, I want them to do something about it, I want them to show me how much they care about me through baking me a cake, or making some gesture that I am important to them, I want this day to mean something, I guess I want to prove to myself that I am meaningful / important / special through having people celebrate this day in my honor - back home I got lots of it, so it was easy for me to believe that I was over it, it was easy for me to take it for granted and push it away within believing that I am above it - but here the truth of me is in my face, because I see that I am not over it, I still do want to be fulfilled by others attention to me, and what better day to let this construct shine than a birthday.
Ok, so I see I am still trapped in the construct of birthdays, just as an example - I checked my Facebook page on the hour to see who had sent me a "happy birthday" - of course I was disappointed that not as many people as I expected, or that they didn't say anything personal, or that people that I don't even know greeted me, but many of the ones I do know and wanted to get their attention, didn't… I baked a cake today to have that familiar sense of a birthday as it has always been related to sweets - I am not over birthdays, though I have been sitting on a high chair of arrogance presenting myself as if I am over it, looking down at the common people for still being trapped in the illusion, in the brainwashing, in the social constructs and norms - when in fact I was there with them all, looking down at myself, judging myself for still caring instead of investigating the point in self honesty, and within self honesty correcting myself and my relationship to this day, to make it into a day of support instead of a day of energetic experiences and consumerism. I realize that it's not about birthdays being good or bad, it's about what I make of them, my relationship to them, and of course who I am within them.
What are birthdays actually about in our society? Obviously they are not actually about celebrating one's birth, it is not a celebration of life, but more like a reason for socially accepted self interest, a reason for shopping, emotional manipulation, testing friends, ranking your value, a reason for ignoring everything and everyone and being allowed to only care about yourself and have everybody around you pamper you and do what you want within honoring the birthday code and within the expectation that you will do the same on their birthday.
"Happy birthday" could be a cool statement if it would actually be about the gratefulness of being alive, being happy to have been birthed into this physical reality to be able to be here in breath and alive, and then celebrating ones birthday would actually be honoring life, but it isn't about honoring ourselves as life, and it isn’t about honoring life in general - it's about having an excuse to celebrate, to go out and drink, to purchase gifts as more cloths or gadgets for those of us that have more than enough, and thus, it has become a day of consumerism, where in the current system, consumerism is related to the pursue of happiness idea where we believe that anything that we can afford to buy we deserve, and what we can't afford we desire.
We wish our loved ones a happy birthday, but wouldn't that mean that we require a special day to be happy, doesn't that imply that our days are not happy, that we do not live in fulfillment and thus require this special day to take the time for ourselves and give ourselves a moment to be happy - why can't we be happy everyday? Why do we accept a world where suffering and struggle is the standard, and happiness is a special occasion? And within this we use our birthdays not as a day to remind ourselves that we are alive and are responsible for everything that is here in our reality, not as a day of self direction in walking our process of becoming the life that we are, the life we have been ignoring, and start willing ourselves to become the living expression of life, to be the living expression of what is best for all life, but instead we use this day to ignore ourselves as life that much more within the self interest of the pursue of happiness, we use it to indulge in the positive energetic feelings of being on top of the world, we use it to turn a blind eye to all the atrocities, all the abuse, suffering and pain that is constantly going on in every moment, including on our special day - we ignore it every day, but on our birthday we can ignore life without guilt, because it is socially accepted and expected of us.
Birthday can be a day of self reflection, a day of reevaluating oneself to take a moment to see if we are who we want to be, if we are a living expression that we can stand by in honor and self respect, if we are actually living up to the standard of life, not as the standard of life sold to us by the media as having a better car / house / gadgets / cloths, but actually living as the standard of life, where the standard of life is equality, balance, breath, living in harmony as one organism. Then birthday would not be about having a happy birthday but would be about creating a world where all are able within their basic living circumstances to have happy days, everyday, uor birthday can be the day we commit ourselves to make a change, a change in ourselves to become one and equal to and as life, and a change in our physical reality to support all as self, as life.
Birthday - symbolizes the day of birth, thus life, and a new beginning as a chance to start a new, fresh.
Be earth day - becoming one with the earth as we are all made of the same dust of the earth, be earth day is a day to walk another step towards becoming one with the physical, as all that is here.
Our birthday is a day to birth ourselves as the earth, as life, as the physical, to commit to ourselves as life to walk this process of becoming life, within realizing that until now we have always existed in contradiction of life, as we have existed in self interest and not in the interest of all life as one, where the construct of birthdays in our society are a clear example of how we have been allowing ourselves to exist.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blindly follow the birthday construct as a day that I deserve to have whatever I want, as a day that makes me special, as a day that I am allowed to ignore everything around me and expect to receive all that I desire, I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realize the abusive nature of birthdays as I've known them, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in emotional manipulation in the excuse that it's my birthday, within this I commit myself to changing my starting point towards birthday, to change my relationship towards birthday, I commit myself to let go of the emotional attachment I have had towards my birthday, I commit myself to stop the emotional manipulation I have allowed myself to participate within, on my birthday, I commit myself to open this construct up and forgive myself as who I have allowed myself to be in ignorance as ignoring what is here as life.
i commit myself to use my birthday as a platform of self support, to investigate and see where i am still attached to the social constructs that do not serve me as life, as they do not serve all equally, and to change myself and correct myself accordingly.
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