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Disdain For My Birthday
When I was a kid, I loved my birthday, because it meant I was closer to being able to by cigarettes and alcohol, and I'd always get a present.
Now, I hate my birthday, because I'm lucky if I get anything, and its really just a reminder that I'm slowly dying. I still have being able to rent a car to look forward to and lower insurance rates, but that's not enough. Ever since I turned 21 this has been the case. I'm 23 btw, and I've stopped drinking alcohol and don't smoke cigarettes. It was somewhat exciting to get a bunch of free drinks from bars, get my 20 clipped from me by a bartender, and throw up all over my friends rug though, but I wouldn't want to repeat it.
The prospect of getting presents and being able to buy alcohol as a kid undermined my appreciation for my youth, and now my fear of getting older is undermining my appreciation for the future. Somethings wrong with this. I just want to be happy with me.
Now, I hate my birthday, because I'm lucky if I get anything, and its really just a reminder that I'm slowly dying. I still have being able to rent a car to look forward to and lower insurance rates, but that's not enough. Ever since I turned 21 this has been the case. I'm 23 btw, and I've stopped drinking alcohol and don't smoke cigarettes. It was somewhat exciting to get a bunch of free drinks from bars, get my 20 clipped from me by a bartender, and throw up all over my friends rug though, but I wouldn't want to repeat it.
The prospect of getting presents and being able to buy alcohol as a kid undermined my appreciation for my youth, and now my fear of getting older is undermining my appreciation for the future. Somethings wrong with this. I just want to be happy with me.
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There is happiness and pain when you are a teenager.
There is happines and pain when you are an adult.
There is happiness and pain when you are old.
There is happiness and pain when you are dying.
It's true.
Knowing I have no control over my aging or my death has liberated me from the fear of either.
You only have now so enjoy it. Like they say the past is gone and the future may never come. All you actually have is now. I wasted parts of my youth and use those lessons not to repeat the mistakes.
I have now, right now and I have learned not to waste it. Take your youthful experiences and missteps and learn from them.
I am not always happy either, but i try to own it, analyze it and find out what causes my unhappiness. I want to always be happy with me, and the path of Buddhism is helping me with that goal.
I wish you well
Today, in fact, this very moment, is the only thing you've got to live in. You're busy living in yesterday and tomorrow. Those don't exist. This moment is what is - enjoy it!
PS: Birthdays aren't about "getting stuff". IMHO it's just another day like the one before. Almost half a million other people on earth share your exact date and year of birth. You're all special!
Since you put it that way, I'm gonna make tomorrow the best day that I can possibly make it. Really, the new day is the gift. I should just remind myself to live life more fully before these seasonal markers come. If I give an effort to live life passionately from moment to moment, then I can't really hold my past actions against myself, even if things don't unfold as they do in my idealizations of the past and future, which happens 0% of the time anyway.
Its kind of funny
I find it odd when I hear older people talk about how much better their teenage or young adult years were over their later adult life. I think their memories of the past are really just illusory ideals and not how it actually was. Teenage years can suck, because your capacity to critically think is evolving while you have parents telling you what you can and can't do. Your adult years can suck because you're all worried about your place in the world and whether or not you'll be able to make a successful career for yourself. Really coming to terms with those challenges, either as a teenager or young adult, can be complicated by similar idealizations about the future. In my teenage years, I thought about how awesome it would be to be out from under my parents, the ones who were kind enough to give me gifts on my birthday. As a young adult, and even as a teenager, I've been worried about not getting a handle on the direction of my life now that I'm not underneath parents and the reality of the freedoms of adulthood have shown that its not all its cracked up to be. The fear of the future is stressful, and ultimately based in expectation. I just need to live in the moment as best as I can and let it unfold on its own.
I am bothered that you hate your birthday because it's a reminder that you are slowly dying. And you're only 23! Hon, I'm 61 and at my age the realization that you WILL die is very real, and just ups the concept of impermanence. You either go into full-time freak-out (as per a lady I know who calls the ambulance and all of her kids every time she doesn't feel well), or you relax into the grace of I've-got-as-long-as-Ive-got ... and you go on and live your living, your mindfulness. Besides, you never know if you will die slowly ... one could go within 15 seconds at any time. Love this quote: "Since death is certain, but the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing right now?" And the correct answer (although not always the chosen one) is "dharma practice". Every year lived can be a year of wisdom gained, so enjoy the journey.
William Shakespeare
Who know The Bard was a Buddhist?
My best sugestion is to sit down. And feel terrible. Take a clock with you. The ticking kind preferably. Just watch it. One minute, two minutes.
Pretty soon, you'll realise time doesin't tick that quick...
So what's the problem. It isn't time.... It's that life is slipping away.
You likely spend a lot of time doing things you hardly remember. Checking your email, I don't know...
One excersize is to learn to walk very slowly. If you do it correctly, it will tkae you about 1 minute to cross a 7m wide room... This may seem painful. Like your life is slipping by. But think
There are 1440 minutes in every day, minus two because you have to brush your teath... That gives you 1438 minutes to do the things you want to do. That's a lot of pacing back and forth.
Most of the time, your day just dissapears. But if you learn to be present with each action. LOOK at what you are doing, don't just do it. If you wash the dishes, don't just day dream. Try looking at each dish, and the food, as it goes away. This will be boring. But soon you'll notice things you never noticed before. And that 15 minutes of scrubbing will seem like weeks!
Mellow Viper, it sounds like through posting and contemplating you are coming to a more helpful point of view about your birthday. Thoughts that a birthday is a reminder that you are slowly dying could be reframed as "a brithday is a reminder that I am still alive".
Ofcourse I may need to be reminded of this myself when my own birthday rolls around in November.
You can change your view to something more positive or just become non-attach to your negative view.
Birthday can be a good thing.
In the East Buddhists celebrate birthdays of Buddhas and saints.
A lot of puja and offering and vegetarianism is done during such birthdays.
We celebrate birthday of Guan Yin, Padmasambhava, Historical Buddha etc.
I see it like the birth of these people bring benefits to sentient beings on earth.
You can choose to perceive similar thing about your own birthday.
13? damn. My melancholic attitude didn't really start around 16. Well, that was mainly because of life changing circumstances I was caught in more than anything. I don't really have any excuse to let the past prevent me from finding happiness in the rest of my life though. Those sound like some good mindfulness techniques. I'll give them a try.
lol, good. I would have advised you not to. Its really not worth it to get totally wrecked. The headache the next morning and having to apologize for ralphing all over someone's carpet is degrading.
He may have been in a real general sense. The way I see it is truth about reality is something that can be rediscovered throughout the ages. If all the wise teachings from Buddha, Christ, Aristotle, all the wise men who have ever lived are forgotten, it'll inevitably be rediscovered in the future. The dark ages and subsequent renaissance are proof of that.