#30: Are we ever ready for adulthood?

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The Birthday Paradox

You know it’s coming round every year, but does that diminish its value?

Now you’re working on the day, you can’t be bothered to celebrate it, and if anything it’s a reminder that you’re not getting any younger…

Up until 18, every birthday was savoured and celebrated.

After that, and it becomes dependent on how you’re feeling, because the responsibility is now on you to make something out of it.

There’s no book on that one.

But when you celebrate birthdays, what exactly are you celebrating?

As a child, it was a part of the illusion of ‘growing up’ - the very thing every child looked forward to.

We look back now, and a lot of our childhood is dying embers waiting to be reignited; a blur of the past.

The thing we wanted to fast forward is also the root of nostalgia and core memories.

Maybe the point of the illusion was to keep us going as we became more enlightened year by year.

But now as an adult, what exactly are you celebrating?

More time it’s a checkpoint - surviving another year of adult life.

Somehow we’re meant to find joy in that. 😂

It’s one thing to be grateful, but another to feel joy.

It circles back to my previous post and the point of maintaining curiosity.

As a child it’s ‘I want x for my birthday’ and if you’re lucky, mum or dad perform magic tricks and it appears in your hands on the day.

As an adult, we’ve been given every incentive to lose that wonder, which compounds the difficulty of taking the ownness to accept there are still many things we’re yet to experience.

The best times are when something unexpected happens; either a random event or an unexpected turn in a prearranged experience.

The challenge is reintroducing that into your adult life.

So what will you do to make your next birthday as exciting as it once was?

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