Good Grief

My birthday is coming up next week. I'm not really looking forward to it. I'm not really sure when it happened, but sometime in the past few years I've not been all that excited for my own birth recognition date. It could stem from a few past bad experiences, a longstanding bout with loneliness or even a grim reminder that I'm getting older and don't have much of anything to show for it. Or maybe I just don't want to age.

I've had some notoriously bad experiences with birthdays. In college I had gone out on my birthday to see a play production. Knowing the group that put it on, they invited me and my roommate to stay for a gathering of talking and light food consumption. Upon returning home, I was well informed that I had missed a great party at my place: my own surprise party. Yep, my roommates had thrown a party and had forgotten to invite the guest of honor. I was even out with a roommate that had full knowledge of said party, but had neglected to prod me home in time for the festivities. The very next year, the same roommates don't even remember when my birthday came around. Granted the closer the day comes, the less I talk about it. But I was rehearsing with a roommate when a random guy came up and asked us to take a survey asking us when our birthdays were. Mine just happened to be on that very day.

I mean really I thought I'd be further with life, with things than I currently am now. It's sad that we even try to measure out our lives with what kind of job we have, what things we possess, or even how our family situation is. Can we really measure life? Each and everyone lives so drastically different that we really don't have anything to adequately compare to. So why do we even try to do so?

The only thing that matters is how one feels about their life and how they are living it. This could be simplified even further to ask, 'How happy am I?' One can only be measured against one's self, and should never attempt to be measured against someone else.

But How happy am I? I'm not very happy. Maybe I'm just not looking to the great things that I have, not counting the individuals. Instead I find myself weighing the bad things, or the worries in my life. Lately I've focused on the monetary problems that I face, or the work problems, and focusing on those is not a guide to happiness. I also thing greatly on not having someone in my life with whom to share my worries and sorrows, my joys and delights.

I know it is silly to get depressed by these things, especially on a day which should be a celebration, a day to really enjoy the great gift of life. And it shouldn't used as a reminder of things that you thought you would have by this point. It needs to be a celebration of who one is and the greatness it is just to be.

A great philosophizer said that happiness was finding a pencil; or anything or anyone that is loved by you is what brings happiness. You keep looking Charlie Brown, you'll find what you are looking for soon enough.