But it's not all about you, you over-bashful, self-conscious dude! Here are four different flavors of birthday celebration I experienced in one past week:
The serene
On Monday, my weekly meditation day, my wife and I invited the group to our home for an extended meditation with birthday celebration for me and another meditator whose birthday was just a few days apart from mine. We enjoyed a delicious dinner my wife prepared, the birthday cake and cookies and ice cream some of them made, some folksy music videos I arranged, then a 20-minute group meditation under the stars in the back yard...
A delightful night of peace and quiet sharing with my "Club Med" extended family of 5+ years.
A delightful night of peace and quiet sharing with my "Club Med" extended family of 5+ years.
The festive
A group of similar-aged friends of ours have been celebrating milestone birthdays for each other for years, and on Thursday (my actual birthday) it's me and another guy's turn (we both share the same birthday, he being one year younger than I though). We reserved a private room in a classy Japanese restaurant in Newport and enjoyed custom-ordered gourmet food all together ... A feast of the decade (last time we did this was when we turned 50)!
The gaudy
Though I had long pulled my birthday info from my social media profile, words still somehow got out and one of my junior high school buddies set off a flurry of birthday wishes over our high school alum chat line that included a tacky "birthday gift" photo such as this:
That gift, live bodies if they were, would help cure the chronical foot problem I have by accompanying me strolling through Southern Californian beaches each day, as I joked with my boyish friends online.
The unexpected
Paul Lo was my true heart-to-heart friend in college and one of my yearly must-meets in northern California, except I didn't get to see him this year when I was there and he was out of town a couple months ago.
On Saturday morning I noticed he had tried to call me through a chat line then left a well wishing note after I failed to answer. I called him right back and had a short but precious chat with him, a pleasant surprise that can only seem so timely for a lifetime friendship.
On Saturday morning I noticed he had tried to call me through a chat line then left a well wishing note after I failed to answer. I called him right back and had a short but precious chat with him, a pleasant surprise that can only seem so timely for a lifetime friendship.
So I just turned 60, how does that feel? Not much really, in comparison to when I turned 50 (half one-hundred, that's a shocker), or even 55 (when I discovered for the first time I could be categorized as senior citizen). Or maybe my premeditation on yet another epical age to come months before has done its job of defanging that the advent of it has lost its sting on me.
60 is a round-up number In Chinese calendar, and we also like to call it the year of turning "easy ears" (耳順), in contrast to 50 when one begins to "reckon what on earth am I here for" (知天命), both quoting from Confucius.
If I were to interpret "easy ears" to mean "whatever my wife says is like music to my ears" ("yes dear") and combine it with the reckoning of what my life's for when turning 50, then I should say by now I should have realized that the purpose of my life is to take whatever my wife says as music to my ears.
That in turn would be music to my wife's ears, wouldn't it?
Maybe 60 is a year of turning around, after all.
May we all find our turn-arounds in life, times to rekindle our love, renew our vows, re-adjust our priorities... to relax, regroup, and relaunch, into the next round of life, all the time!
May we all find our turn-arounds in life, times to rekindle our love, renew our vows, re-adjust our priorities... to relax, regroup, and relaunch, into the next round of life, all the time!
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