Birthday

What is the obsession with birthdays about? Why do we choose to forget that every birthday is a sentence to a death day?

Birth is the lottery of the Universe. Where you are born, to whom you are born, with what genetic characteristics you are born, all these determine your life experience to a great degree. Those, for the most part, who are blessed in birth deny this, but it is true, statistically and scientifically.

So, life itself is a lottery. There are winners and losers on an elemental level. One human reaction to this reality is to claim their winnings are deigned by a Supreme Being. Another is to enshrine their luckier ancestors as deserving of great praise and sanctity. Yet another is to establish and enshrine a genetic dynasty. The losers of life's lottery cope, strive and survive as best they can. If they are fortunate enough or aggressive enough, they may find themselves in a society which believes in social security and economic justice for all. If not, they live and die in hunger, pain and misery.

I have always found birthday celebrations somewhat silly. "Look how wonderful I am." or "Look what a wonderful human being I have made." or "Look at what a wonderful person I have employed or found to love." These have been the undercurrents of all too many birthday celebrations I have observed. While I think applauding, supporting and loving people every day is a worthy practice, I feel uncomfortable when I see celebrations that are lies in settings where the daily practice of love, support and appreciation are badly lacking. These parties often ring of hypocrisy and token compensation for neglect and bad treatment.

I happen to believe my death day is a much more important day, of which to be constantly mindful. It may be today. I think of how different human society would be, if we all were aware of this in every moment as part of our human experience.

Part of becoming a true humanist is embracing the reality of the human condition in your own daily life. Every human being you see has been brought into life unwillingly into circumstances outside his/her control. Most have been brought into life by human beings who have not realistically accepted the grave responsibility of reproduction. They have rolled the dice for the unborn, who must then live with the consequences for a whole lifetime and then die.

This brings great sobriety to bringing another human being to life. I have seen those who have accepted this fully. They are the few exemplary parents I have met. However, I have seen many more birthday celebrations where the true children were the parents, still at sea with what their lives are truly about.

As a totally homosexual man, I have won one lottery, I feel, by not having the biological urge to take the vast staggering, responsibility for fathering another human life. This does give me a very different perspective on birth and death. I do not see myself as somehow becoming immortal through my offspring, for example. This is a concept that seems rather primitive to me, frankly.

I am the genetic offspring of two human beings, but I certainly am not either one of them in consciousness or practice. I would not want to be. It is enough of a burden to live with what I have been left genetically and environmentally through their transmission of various challenges to be overcome. Perhaps, if I had been otherwise gifted, I would feel differently. I understand that. But, I have not, and billions of others on this planet have not. My empathy and compassion is with them.

I have struggled with this question for many years now. I no longer see my displeasure over my birthday as simply neurotic, as I have been encouraged to do by many I know. My practice every year is to use my birthday as a time to meditate on these issues again. And, as the approach of my death day becomes more palpable, my perspective becomes wider and deeper on the randomness and commonality of all life. So much of being human, it seems to me, is choosing to do daily whatever we can to improve on life's accidents for all our fellow beings.

Accidents

All of life is accidental. This is not a statement of equivocation. This is an alarm. Wake up.

If you are pretty, healthy, well built, a racial majority where you live, born to a wealthy family by world standards, all of this has come to you by accident. You have not earned any of it. Therefore, you are not any more special than someone who wins the lottery. Society will reward you for these favorable accidents, as long as you conform to what society wants from you. And, because these favorable accidents may have spoiled you in many ways, you may well do everything you can to remain privileged and to feel superior.

Turning the mind away from the conformist view of favorable accidents is very hard for those blessed by them. This is at the very root of a celebrity culture, pumped up by capitalist advertising. It is also at the root of social stagnation. The pretty and rich often call the shots. They are elected to public office. They determine the fashions. They portray the heroes in cinema.

Compassion requires turning away from one's reliance on one's own happy accidents of birth. This, after all, is the story of the historic Buddha. When a person truly abandons the trappings of his accidents of birth in favor of becoming a person of change and intent for the benefit of all beings, it is indeed inspirational. Part of my practice is acknowledging the accidental nature of life and death for all beings.

Accidents

When you relinquish illusions about the nature of life, death and creation, you can accept the reality that we are all the products of and the subjects of accidents. The greatest accident which befalls our lives is the accident of birth. One sperm hits one egg and you are it. Which particular sperm hits which particular egg basically determines what kind of body you will have, what kind of upbringing you will have, and what your social position will be ultimately. Beauty queens and wealthy trust funders will be aghast at the concept that they haven't "made it on their own with hard work". Yet the reality is that most of what we are is an accident of genetics. If you can learn to accept this view of life, you will be blessed with a whole new view of the world and your place in it. There is no need, for example, to fear accidents. Accidents can actually change your life for the better as easily as change it for the worse. You can be released from the fear of death, because you will have to accept that your death will be an accident, unless you end it yourself. Fear of failure diminishes when you realize that whatever you may do could be destroyed or enhanced by an accident. While planning and living with hope for an accident-free future are human qualities which can be used to make our lives more bearable, it is just as helpful to maintain a basic awareness that life is rooted in the great accident of evolution. One large meteor could end this accident of life on earth in an instant.