I’m writing this post before the anniversary of my birthday. I hope it will appear on the day I was actually born on that afternoon of the 8th November 1981. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be 31 which is almost one third of a century.
I don’t know where I’ll be when this gets published on my blog. I might be eating, working or checking my messages. That’s what I expect to be doing on a Thursday afternoon at least. Indeed, as I’m involved in my work and other commitments I find that I’m always on the go. The tendency, of course, is to go through life without really engaging with the unfolding reality. Without being aware of that passing moment. Without realising that you have lost that point in life forever.
I return back to my birthday. It’s very easy to be distracted from focusing on what I should be writing about at times. Thoughts from the past, concerns about the future and my present situation appear to take over my life even now. I was born 31 years ago.
I am expected to remember this occasion.
Yet, how many of us wonder about what was there before you were born? Can we contemplate a time when we were not?
Of course, we have learned that there was a time before we were born. The time of our parents and all the generations that came before them. Each person, no matter how we might judge them today, had a role to play in our being here alive.
In my case, I must also be grateful for scientists who have permitted me to live until this age.
If these people hadn’t survived for one reason or another, I would NOT be here.
The birthday I celebrate and the celebrations of the birthday many others celebrate throughout the year is a testament to an infinite chain of events that arose out of a cycle of co-dependence.
I might dare look even further back in history and trace my origins back to the genesis of our galaxy and even to the point where the universe was created in the first place.
But, as I contemplate the mystery of my being, I am also mystified by the very creation of our universe. For, my experience of time is so short and finite and my knowledge so restricted and limited, that I can only refer to the beginning of time itself but, as I am a being in time, I cannot conceive of a timeless state.
I may be writing this for my own self, I admit. But, the point is simple. As I reflect on my 31st birthday, I am humbled by the fact that I am born of a mother, a father. I am humbled because if it hadn’t been for the many people who came and went before...
If it hadn’t been for the way history has turned out..
If it hadn’t been for the birth of the Earth, the Sun and the solar system...
If it hadn’t been for the fact there was a universe to be in...
If it hadn’t been for life itself.
I WOULD NOT be here…
There’s no more to say.
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