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.

Birthright

The evolution of human consciousness has brought a new view to the relationship between parent and child. For thousands of years, children were seen as beholding to their parents (especially fathers) for being brought into human life. Children were seen as and treated as free labor and pawns of their parents to carry on their blood line, surname, and so forth. Many societies condoned infanticide and other forms of murder/brutality by parents upon their offspring.

The new consciousness, which has been fostered by the secular segments of society, against angry protest from the religiously deluded, is based on the concept that parents are responsible for their children's wellbeing and development into independent, evolving adults. More educated parents take this responsibility more seriously. They strive to provide their children with a life which will surpass their own in positive growth and experience.

Practice for those raised in the old model, the model of child as slave, entails in part declaring a birthright to respect and independence. This practice is difficult, especially if one's parents live into old age.

Claiming one's birthright to own one's own life and to be responsible for it is a major and necessary step to personal evolution.

Singles

Human beings in pairs are seen as more stable, more trustworthy and more worthy of societal approval. This myth is gradually eroding. Human beings in heterosexual pairs with genetic offspring are seen as the peak of the pyramid formed by the human species. This undeserved social status is being clung to with extended talons by religious fanatics all over the planet.

Those who see the reproduction of human beings in jeopardy when the planet is swarming with nearly 6 billion people are clearly insane. Those who intelligently choose to not reproduce should be compensated by the human species with great appreciation.

The barrier to this sane approach to human reproduction and the choices about pairing or being single is the greed of capitalist thinking, which is based on endless population expansion. Those in power rely on the maintenance of an endless pool of mindless taxpayers and unquestioning laborers.

Being single and independently functional in this capitalist plan is quite stressful and challenging. This, of course, is not the perception created by those who are rabidly invested in marriage and reproduction as a holy crusade. Those who are married with children find it difficult to appreciate the special qualities of their single friends and relations.

The single person is mobile, often well educated, sexually free of emotional chains and more likely to be open to people of varied backgrounds. Single people are used to being in friendships with paired people, as well as single people. Single people are often the caretakers of the elderly in their families. Single people actively confront loneliness and alienation in their lives by working at being socially engaged. They are less likely to be complacent and self satisfied.

My practice has included maintaining 'single consciousness' in my life while allowing myself to be committed and caring in my relationships. This is a difficult practice. It is not a static practice. It is a daily practice.

Family

Family is a concept, built on genetic reality. If human beings concentrated more on the genetic and less on the sentimental aspects of family, the species would advance greatly.

The sentimental aspects of family are based in primal fear and dependence. Family is the modern remnant of tribe. Tribalism gave way centuries ago in civilized societies to nationalism. The family became a day-to-day functional unit within the nationalist structures. Family was a vehicle for maintaining property, industry and wealth.

Family identity will gradually be superseded by social human identity as humanism and education erode confidence in superstition (religion) and hereditary wealth (oligarchy) as sustaining institutions of democracy and social well being. The advancement of science in the face of staggering environmental degradation will lead to an understanding that family identity is less important for the species to survive than human identity.

Sentimentality is the enemy of science and the enemy of practice. The first liberation of practice is the liberation from sentimentality toward family of origin. This is often called 'growing up'. Practice entails being equally responsible and compassionate to all human beings, including the practitioner's family of origin. This is difficult. Practice often is.

Commitment

Commitment is not complicated. Commitment to another person is being there for that person in mind, body and spirit, when being there for that person is needed and wanted by that person. It is not simply hanging around in a prespecified role and half-heartedly going through the motions. In too many cases. this is called 'marriage' or 'family'.

Commitment is a living, creative and conscious decision. It is not a name on a deed or a bank account. In these materialistic times, commitment is confused with financial contract. They are not the same. The financial contract may indeed be a mutually decided upon symbol of an ongoing commitment. However, the commitment itself is only as good as its regular renewal and verification by those partnered in it.

My practice involves serious maintenance and clarification of commitments. This is a process, alive in the present in each relationship which entails commitment. In an existential sense, every transaction in my life entails an openness on my part to commitment to honest and compassionate interaction. This applies to daily business transactions, contacts with strangers and contacts within my social network. When a society maintains this kind of practice, it is considered truly civilized.