and i miss the days when i honestly didn’t care.
wolfgang amadeus mozart composed all of his work and was already long-dead by the time he would have been my age. alexander the great established the single greatest empire the world would see for almost two whole millennia and was already pushing up the daisies. and let’s not even talk about a certain historical figure whose birth and death spawned the single most powerful influence on western civilization ever, the ripples and aftershocks of which continue to shape world events every single day.
there comes a time every birthday when i like to take stock of where i am in my life, see how far i am from where i wanted to be—hell, where i hoped i would be just last year.
so what have i accomplished in this span of time? what’s going right?
i have my health. i have a family with whom my relationship is actually pretty good. i have friends that i know would move the very earth if they thought it would help and it was within their power.
and of course, i’ve found my soulmate, who also happens to be my best friend, and we got married.
i won’t lie: for as wonderful as all of that is, for as fortunate as that makes me, there’s a little bit of me that’s just not entirely, 100% satisfied.
in part, that’s because i don’t believe in being satisfied. i believe satisfaction leads to stagnation. but that’s only a part of it. because there’s another small part that wonders if maybe—just maybe—i’m not a big old hypocrite. and of course, then there’s the rest, the part that feels guilty for thinking that love isn’t enough.
i know that in all the ways that matter, i’ve got what is truly important in life.
it’s just…it’s just that there’s a voice in my head that keeps screaming in the wee hours: “it would be nice to have some of the unimportant stuff, too, asshole!”
all right, enough of this boring shit. i heard a joke while watching babylon 5 once upon a time:
how many centauri does it take to screw in a light bulb.
how many?
nowadays, just one. but in the days of the great republic, a hundred servants would leap to change a thousand light bulbs at the snap of your fingers!
so how do you prefer to celebrate your birthdays?
ed
