How To Have A Different Kind Of Birthday Celebration

Tomorrow is my birthday and up until a couple of weeks ago I was contemplating on what to do for it. I was thinking about going out for a meal with friends, or going bowling, or doing something of the like. But then, a strange thought occurred to me which resulted from recent emails that I had been getting.

It was getting to the stage whereby every other day I was getting emails from friends saying that there was a meet up to celebrate a particular occasion or a leaving party but there would always be something that involved going out for a meal. After a while these events tend to lose their speciality, if it’s something you do too often, unless it’s a hobby of some sort.

But I find this outlet somewhat lacking for me now. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with people. I am outgoing and I love socialising. However being a non-smoker, non drinker, vegetarian always makes socialising a difficult prospect unless you’re with a crowd who have a similar mindset.

(I would just like to quickly point out that I’m not trying to belittle anyone else’s notions of socialising or social activities but that particular type of socialising is not for me)

So I decided to sit down and meditate on the question of what I want my birthday to be about. Does my birthday mean anything to me other than the physical age of this body? Birthdays are auspicious times, what can I do to make the most out of them?

I had various questions flowing through my head and I did eventually come up with an answer that for me, adds definition to the person that I choose to be. For me, every act is an act of self definition and so actions in general are very important as they make statements about who you are.

After meditating for a while on the subject I had a vision in my head about what I wanted my birthday to mean for me.

I decided that I wanted to use my birthday, as a marker, to push myself that little bit harder every year. I want to push myself physically, mentally and spiritually, and challenge myself that little bit more every year.

For some people, getting a year older is an excuse to be able to do less things. I don’t want that to be the case for me. I want to be able to do more as the years go by. I believe that the body ageing doesn’t necessarily mean that it can do less and less. Only that mindset itself makes it so. I know I can take this mind, body and soul to new levels by choosing to!

On the physical plain, my weight and health is something that I’ve always battled with and even though things have been on the up in that area of my life, over the last year, I don’t want to lose that focus. So therefore I’ve set myself a goal of running the Marathon on or around my 40th birthday.

Mentally, the challenge, is pursuit of knowledge and even though I strongly believe that we innately posses infinite knowledge already, it will be my goal to further expand on that knowledge in the experiential sense by interacting more with others and gaining a greater understanding of people, the world and the workings of the universe.

Spirituality is not something that be tangibly measured so as a result I don’t think it is something that I can put a physical tag on but I will say that my will be to gain a great spiritual understanding of myself and God. Also, there maybe one way of measuring spiritual progress and that is by comparing my thoughts, words and actions and see how in sync’ they truly are.

Of course there is still fun to be had, I’m sure I will still always celebrate birthdays with other people, I will still always go out for those meals and go and play bowling and have laugh with friends but, alas, my birthday will never be the same again.