There was a time when birthdays were about cakes, balloons, grainy photographs of toothless children. A while later, birthdays were about friends, campfires, beer-soaked nights at bars. With the passing years, birthdays become more subdued, more in keeping with the mundane circuit of life. Youthful celebration gives way to pensive reflection. Birthdays are signposts on the highway of mortality. Each year we catch glimpse of something that looms larger on the horizon.
That birthdays become less jubilant is not an indication of a fading spirit, but an entrance into maturity. My birthday this year began like many others. I stirred under the sheets. The dog licked my face, and I rose. I made the bed, brushed my teeth and began with the morning’s meditation. I watered the plants, walked the dog. I watched the cordons of green on the street – Asian Plane, Ponderosa Pine, Big-Leaf Maple, Gerry Oak. How they are ever vibrant in late summer! The morning was numinous and whole. Like Mary Oliver, I also don’t know what God is, nor what death is. However, I believe “they have between them some fervent and necessary arrangement.” To live in marvel is how I include myself in this arrangement. Or, as Mary Oliver advises: “pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.” If there is something new to notice, then the day had paid itself in full. Look how the water beads on the hosta’s broad leaves, how the floor of pine needles convey the scent of summer, how the wind carries the fragrance of ocean brine. In these sensual encounters, I come home again and nestle into the warmth of life.
To be at rest with life is the gift and practice of each new day. It is a gift because each day is a gratuitous occurrence, something that I do not earn through effort or merit. It is a practice because engagement requires intention and discipline. I tend to squander my days more readily than I cherish them. Therefore, I resolve to participate more earnestly in the fleeting moments, not by exploiting the hours – maximizing utility and coaxing pleasure – but by meeting each moment with full awareness. The sacred is in the mundane. The secrets I long to uncover are revealed under my nose: making coffee, answering email, sweeping the floor. There is no life apart from this moment, this activity. Search elsewhere, and I am lost. Returning to the present, I return to life’s unfolding. If everyday is a gift, then everyday I begin again. Each day is a birthday when awareness starts anew. Scales peel from eyes, scent lifts the nose. Colours burst near and far. Just to be alive here and now. . . all is sufficient.
Still, there are traces of alarm. The years are often unkind. Age creeps up and I do not wear it well. Getting older is rarely pretty. We are not always like whisky that grows finer with age. Cholesterol climbs. Aches stock the sinews. Health problems that once plagued others now lurk in plain sight. Aging is not for the faint of heart; it rides roughshod regardless of our condition. The body’s slow and inevitable decline is our introduction to mortality; it comes to us in whispers, signalling what is to follow. If we are lucky, the process is quiet and subtle, like a slow procession toward a distant destination. In this time of decline, we have an opportunity to learn to soften, to reflect on the time remaining, to relinquish artifices that no longer serve, to embrace the tenderness of now. A day of reflection is a day of learning. What great mercy that we die a slow death!
If I live wisely, time provides knowledge in exchange for the dwindling days. I see more clearly how the spectre of death animates the vigour of youth. There are grand projects that demand effort and attention: fix the climate crisis, eradicate racism, uproot corporate greed, abolish war. These are grand undertakings that sharpens one’s purpose and magnifies one’s sense of import. Each project confers an aura of heroism; it is a way of making myself count, of asserting my worth in the face of oblivion. Saving the world is the ultimate immortality project that underscores my value in a universe indifferent to my destiny. At the heart of each moral crusade is a pulsing anxiety and a compensatory effort to defy my insignificance. This device of the ego can be a dangerous gambit; believing myself on the side of the angels, I am liable to conjure demons and wage war against those who do not share my project. It’s not the world I wish to save, but the feeling of self-importance that holds me captive.
The causes are worthy, and worthy of my finest effort; but in time, the devices become transparent. At last, children must grow up and lay down their toys. Maturity calls us to relinquishes all immortality projects. Worthy efforts continue without the artifice of self-importance, the illusion that any campaign can erase one’s insignificance in the face of death. The immortality projects set aside, the effort remains alongside liberation, peace and rest.
If I live wisely, age brings its own sweetness and depth. Above the relish of possessions and accomplishments, one savours what one becomes. To shape what we become is our ultimate gift to ourselves. The virtues that we cultivate in our finite hours brighten our nights, they provide warmth even if everyone cleaves to cold darkness. This moment is another opportunity. Nothing else is needed. This moment, I begin again.